Making your tracks loud?

I personally believe it's important to keep your monitors fairly quiet while doing a mixdown, for a couple of reasons. First of all, when things are louder, they always sound more exciting. This is a fundamental aspect of the way our ears work, the way we hear different frequencies in relation to others is dependent on the volume we hear them at. (Google Fletcher-Munson curves if you want more info on this phenomenon.) The simple result of this is that while things might sound great at louder volumes, they tend to sound very flat and dull at quieter volumes. However I've found that the reverse is NOT true. If you can make a song sound great at lower volumes, it will only sound that much better when turned up.

Secondly your ears begin to actually get tired when forced to listen to loud music for extended periods of time, something referred to as ear fatigue. After awhile you begin to lose the ability to make accurate decisions based on what you're hearing. Trying harder or forcing yourself to focus more will not help, your ears just will not convey the proper information to your brain anymore. The only way to fix this, is to take a long break from mixing (we're talking hours here, not minutes), and likely you don't want to stop just when things are going well. So keep the volume down for most of your mixing, and only turn it up once in awhile if you need to listen louder as a reference. You should be able to easily talk to another person without raising your voice if you have the volume set right. I'd bet money that in the end you get a better overall result, even if the process might not be as fun as you're used to.