A coworker sent me this today; this idea had never crossed my mind:

Not sure if you've already got something setup to automatically update your svn checkouts, but thought I'd mention this. I just created a .bat file:

TortoiseProc.exe /command:update /path:"C:\Code\Path\to\Proj1" /closeonend:1

TortoiseProc.exe /command:update /path:"C:\Code\Path\to\Proj2" /closeonend:1

etc...

Then setup a windows task to run the file everyday at 4:30am. No more out of date code!

Well, that's cool. Two benefits I see to this:

1. If you happen to go for several days without checking in (not a good practice, but it happens) your chance of getting a nasty merge conflict is reduced.
2. If you switch over to a project that you haven't worked on for a while you don't have to wait for a long, drawn-out update to execute before you can jump right in.