Sorry for the confusion. Hopefully I can clear this up:

Step 1 - make sure you have a master fader on so you can watch your headroom. Obviously, clipping is bad.

Step 2 - begin your mix. I like to start with the kick drum and bass-line, unless I have so reason not to. Before you start moving faders, make sure your tracks are in-phase with each other.

Step 3 - Continue adding in tracks, keep checking phase. Use compression and eq as necessary. Make sure you are not adding distortion from within your plugins. The only way to know is to open each plugin and check the indicators.

Step 4 - Notice that I haven't mentioned adding effects. I prefer to leave those until I have an acceptable dry mix. Makes it easier for me to maintain a proper perspective of the mix. The one exception here would be effects that are production choices, i.e. Doppler effects and the like.

Step 5 - continue until your instrumental is mixed. Worth mentioning "submixing" here. I swear by it. Basically you re-route a few instruments to an aux for further processing of their dry signals.

Step 6 - add effects if needed to your instrumental. If your mix is good and proper, feel free to print it and re-import it to save CPU.

Step 7 - follow steps 1-6, but this time for your vocals.