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Zen and the Art of Daily Driver Detailing
If you're like me, you are not a professional detailer working on many and various cars every day, but you're just doing your own car in the yard or driveway, and this is a hobby/therapy. Any of us can have a near enough to show car look on a daily basis - moderate and temperate weather permitting, of course. Here's some things I've learned from this forum, mixed with my own experiences in keeping a black daily driver clean and fresh in the hot-n-humid Southern US... 
Don't Drive in the Rain
This is a biggie given the amount of rainfall the South now gets, and sometimes you have no choice, but if you do have the choice, don't. You'll be more Zen-like if you just wait until the roads are dry enough so as the grease, grime, mud, and other refuse from the environment and other vehicles is not sloshed up all over your otherwise clean machine and its surprisingly clean undercarriage. If you are so unlucky as to be caught driving on rain-soaked filthy roads, especially interstates, you will then do a full, sudsy, therapeutic two-bucket wash-n-wax and undercarriage cleaning as soon as humanly possible to recover from the violation.
Don't Drive Off-Road
But, you ask, what about parks, short gravel driveways, and so forth?? Drive slow so you do not create a cloud, stay on the dry parts, and clean up later if needed, say with an undercarriage rinse to get off all the dust from the sand, gravel or whatever. This should all be fairly obvious to many of us, but don't drive on anything that would allow rocks and such to fly up and hit your car, which only makes for dents, rust spots, etc, which also goes for your undercarriage. If you drive a truck/SUV or something and love to go mud-riding, this does not apply to you, Dude. In such cases, you're into a whole other Zen: "Zen and the Art of Not Caring About Having an Immaculately Clean Show Car".
Don't Wash the Car "Just Because it's Saturday"
What? That's right, achieving detailing Zen means avoiding wasted effort, water, supplies, and time, when the car isn't really dirty and nobody is going to marvel at the difference anyway. Sometimes, a car just needs a dust off. Maybe you only need some QD to touch up a spot or two, or maybe a 5 minute re-wax using QW, or maybe all those steps in 10 minutes. Many times, you only need to rinse aggressively and then blow dry, then you can do some QD/QW work. You can go months like this, staying Zen-like and flexible. This will reduce the potential ill-effects of washing too much, extending your DA correction's life. Others will think you "wax your car" every day. Let them.
When you do Wash or Rinse: Filter, Flood, and Blow
After you have worn your back out washing your vehicle thoroughly using two buckets and a mild wash-n-wax product, do not add insult to injury by spending the next hour(s) drying by hand while dripping sweat. You might add to your swirls and spiderwebs with an un-lubed rag, and there are just better and faster ways to get the car dry. (a) Get a water filter if your water supply has hard deposits making spots. (b) Use a flooding trick as best you can to reduce the number of small splatter beads on your surfaces. Lastly, (c) you'll immediately start blowing dry with an electric leaf blower, working from the top down. You'll have a perfectly dry car with no spotting, and all in minutes. If you need to, you can then enjoy, rather than toil, in doing some QD/QW touch-ups.
Dump your Driver's Floor Mat Often
The catch-all under your feet has a huge impact on how you and others perceive your interior (and you). Just by dumping the visible dirt and tiny rocks off your driver's mat, giving it a rap your hand or a slap across a tree, then putting it back, can give the whole interior an almost fully clean look, especially a black interior. You can dust and clean the rest later, of course, or do the interior in stages over weeks, as you handle the exterior.
Keep Detailing Merch in the Car
Keep a bag in your trunk with MF rags, QD and QW, and any other merch you might be expected to whip out either daily or for a particular cruise. Say you get a bird dropping or tree sap. Say you hit a muddy pothole. Say you just went through a cloud of dust or pollen. Say your wheels and tires are covered in brake dust and don't shine as brightly as they should. Just pull over into a parking lot, and minutes later you're back out cruising.
Remember that Nobody Cares
This is the hardest part, I know. Nobody really cares that you have some dust or pollen on your otherwise perfectly detailed and immaculately clean machine. They don't really see the dust or pollen, but what is underneath, which is still an otherwise perfectly detailed and immaculately clean machine. Nobody cares that you spent hours posting on MOL, hours or days doing a DA correction as good as a pro, that you have something called spray wax in your trunk, or that you get huffy over the difference between Ultimate and Gold Class. Other people (with other hobbies and therapies) only see the effect of your Zen-like approach to detailing, which is to say that your car is cleaner and shinier than 99% of the all other cars in your Burg, and that alone is very impressive to them. The Zen here is that you don't care that they don't care, and yet you do this anyway, because it is a great hobby/therapy you love to do. Otherwise, what's the point??
Don't Drive in the Rain
This is a biggie given the amount of rainfall the South now gets, and sometimes you have no choice, but if you do have the choice, don't. You'll be more Zen-like if you just wait until the roads are dry enough so as the grease, grime, mud, and other refuse from the environment and other vehicles is not sloshed up all over your otherwise clean machine and its surprisingly clean undercarriage. If you are so unlucky as to be caught driving on rain-soaked filthy roads, especially interstates, you will then do a full, sudsy, therapeutic two-bucket wash-n-wax and undercarriage cleaning as soon as humanly possible to recover from the violation.
Don't Drive Off-Road
But, you ask, what about parks, short gravel driveways, and so forth?? Drive slow so you do not create a cloud, stay on the dry parts, and clean up later if needed, say with an undercarriage rinse to get off all the dust from the sand, gravel or whatever. This should all be fairly obvious to many of us, but don't drive on anything that would allow rocks and such to fly up and hit your car, which only makes for dents, rust spots, etc, which also goes for your undercarriage. If you drive a truck/SUV or something and love to go mud-riding, this does not apply to you, Dude. In such cases, you're into a whole other Zen: "Zen and the Art of Not Caring About Having an Immaculately Clean Show Car".
Don't Wash the Car "Just Because it's Saturday"
What? That's right, achieving detailing Zen means avoiding wasted effort, water, supplies, and time, when the car isn't really dirty and nobody is going to marvel at the difference anyway. Sometimes, a car just needs a dust off. Maybe you only need some QD to touch up a spot or two, or maybe a 5 minute re-wax using QW, or maybe all those steps in 10 minutes. Many times, you only need to rinse aggressively and then blow dry, then you can do some QD/QW work. You can go months like this, staying Zen-like and flexible. This will reduce the potential ill-effects of washing too much, extending your DA correction's life. Others will think you "wax your car" every day. Let them.
When you do Wash or Rinse: Filter, Flood, and Blow
After you have worn your back out washing your vehicle thoroughly using two buckets and a mild wash-n-wax product, do not add insult to injury by spending the next hour(s) drying by hand while dripping sweat. You might add to your swirls and spiderwebs with an un-lubed rag, and there are just better and faster ways to get the car dry. (a) Get a water filter if your water supply has hard deposits making spots. (b) Use a flooding trick as best you can to reduce the number of small splatter beads on your surfaces. Lastly, (c) you'll immediately start blowing dry with an electric leaf blower, working from the top down. You'll have a perfectly dry car with no spotting, and all in minutes. If you need to, you can then enjoy, rather than toil, in doing some QD/QW touch-ups.
Dump your Driver's Floor Mat Often
The catch-all under your feet has a huge impact on how you and others perceive your interior (and you). Just by dumping the visible dirt and tiny rocks off your driver's mat, giving it a rap your hand or a slap across a tree, then putting it back, can give the whole interior an almost fully clean look, especially a black interior. You can dust and clean the rest later, of course, or do the interior in stages over weeks, as you handle the exterior.
Keep Detailing Merch in the Car
Keep a bag in your trunk with MF rags, QD and QW, and any other merch you might be expected to whip out either daily or for a particular cruise. Say you get a bird dropping or tree sap. Say you hit a muddy pothole. Say you just went through a cloud of dust or pollen. Say your wheels and tires are covered in brake dust and don't shine as brightly as they should. Just pull over into a parking lot, and minutes later you're back out cruising.
Remember that Nobody Cares
This is the hardest part, I know. Nobody really cares that you have some dust or pollen on your otherwise perfectly detailed and immaculately clean machine. They don't really see the dust or pollen, but what is underneath, which is still an otherwise perfectly detailed and immaculately clean machine. Nobody cares that you spent hours posting on MOL, hours or days doing a DA correction as good as a pro, that you have something called spray wax in your trunk, or that you get huffy over the difference between Ultimate and Gold Class. Other people (with other hobbies and therapies) only see the effect of your Zen-like approach to detailing, which is to say that your car is cleaner and shinier than 99% of the all other cars in your Burg, and that alone is very impressive to them. The Zen here is that you don't care that they don't care, and yet you do this anyway, because it is a great hobby/therapy you love to do. Otherwise, what's the point??
It's hard to remember that perspective sometimes, but also, detailing is its own reward.
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