I have shamelessly stolen this idea for a thread from Cloudy Nights, simply because I think it's a great subject for discussion. CN user JayInUT started a thread asking how people have changed, as deep sky observers, over time.

Here is my input:

Like everyone else, I suppose, I began with the planets and Moon before becoming interested in deep sky observing in 1993 and I'm now purely a deep sky observer.
I began with a 60mm birder's spotting scope, before getting a simple 6" homemade Dobsonian and I've also owned 8", 12" and 18" (my current scope) telescopes over the last 20 years.

It used to be that I would just take my charts to my observing site and hop around a bit, from object to object. This wasn't very productive and, nowadays, I have observing programs and stick to them which is much more effective and I am currently working my way through the Herschel 2500, constellation by constellation, although I do sometimes get distracted by trying to find dim little UGCs and MACs in the vicinity of bright NGC galaxies, with varying levels of success (in the case of MACs very little!)! I also make more notes and sketches than I did which helps improve my observing, rather than boring, unadorned lists I made when I was a novice observer. I still try and get as many objects in as possible over the course of a session but not at the expense of quality, i.e. I want to have a good look at objects and take notes rather than just 'hit and run'. I also try and write something down about each and every object, but when you're confronted by similar-looking dim little ovals it's hard to write something different on them - if I come away from a session with few or no notes or sketches then I feel it is a session wasted. Unless I am doing a sketch of a bright and detailed object, or a cluster of galaxies, I don't spend vast amounts of time on one object, usually around 2 to 5 minutes.
I like all deep sky objects but I am primarily a galaxy observer with globular clusters and planetary nebulae competing for my second favourite class of object.

I am not into outreach. If it's a good clear Moonless night, I would far rather be doing my own observing than showing bright objects to the public (that's not to say that I don't like the odd session of outreach, once a month or so, when the Moon is around, down at our society's observatory showing a few things to interested visitors - apart from anything else, it is sometimes nice to have your ego massaged by public visitors impressed at your star-hopping skills! ).

I don't use GoTo, as my scope is a Dobsonian and I haven't really got the funds or the inclination to fit it with digital setting circles, especially as I have spent 20 years star hopping with the result that, 99 times out of 100, I can find stuff reasonably quickly and easily that way. Years ago, though, I wished I had a GoTo system as I could never find anything and it was frustrating, but that was no bad thing because I got used to it and proficient at it; the result is that I believe I know the sky better than those who have only ever used a GoTo system. I would like a tracking platform, though, to make the use of high magnifications easier.

What about everyone else?