I normally just throw everything up and work from there. Maybe a little panning here and there. I normally am trying to see how the vocals work with tracks and also the quality of the vocal recording. Also something usually pops up that I don't like and I make a mental note. Lately I've been mixing mostly pop/rnb/ and experimental rock. When I am doing mostly poular stuff, my focus at first is more vocal driven,lead, and backgrounds. I spend most of the time getting that the best, since the vocals usually drive the song. The rest of the tracks for me are pretty easy, since I have everything in my studio patched a certain way, so I can dial up any sound I want depending on the situation. My studio is setup this way so I can do recalls easily and I can knockout songs much faster. When I am doing experimental stuff, I am usually involved in the production more, where my mixes are part of the sound. So I usually follow the pattern above and I do tricks and extra stuff to try to set the mixes apart. This is actually my favorite stuff to mix cause I can use my creativity more. Again just finds what works for you and stick with it. Hope this helps.

I kind of just throw everything up. I might have to drop things back or raise my basic mix by a few dB across all the faders to get my gain staging and headroom in order. If I'm starting with the drums I have the kick average around -10dBVU before I add anything else so I don't run out of steam and overload the mix bus.