The predictable list of what needs trimming
Long dead air at the start before anyone speaks, an accidental false start that gets re-recorded seconds later, an off-topic tangent that doesn't serve the episode, and a rambling outro after the actual content has ended are the recurring candidates for trimming in almost every recorded conversation — knowing this list in advance turns editing from an open-ended task into a checklist you can move through quickly.
Cutting speech requires more care than cutting music
Speech has natural pauses between words and sentences that make good cut points, but cutting mid-word or even mid-syllable is far more jarring in speech than the equivalent in music, because listeners process speech linguistically, not just acoustically — a cut that leaves a word slightly clipped registers immediately, even to a casual listener who couldn't explain the audio theory behind why it sounds wrong. Finding the gap in the waveform right at a natural breath or pause, rather than an arbitrary timestamp, is what avoids this.
Removing a section entirely vs. cutting it down
For long recordings, it's worth distinguishing between segments to cut out completely (an interruption, a technical glitch, an off-topic detour) and segments to simply shorten (a slow-moving explanation that could say the same thing in less time) — the first is a straightforward two-point cut, while the second is closer to editing for pacing and often benefits from listening to the trimmed version afterward to confirm it still flows naturally.
Filler words are a judgment call, not an automatic rule
Removing every single "um," "uh," and repeated word can make speech sound clinical and unnatural rather than polished — a small amount of natural disfluency is normal in real conversation and often reads as more authentic than a perfectly scrubbed track. Trimming the more disruptive instances (a long pause filled with "um," a stumbled restart) while leaving occasional natural filler intact usually sounds better than aggressively removing every instance.