If you are the kind of person you want to read what has been changed before updating an app you can disable the auto app update setting. Or enable if you want updates fully automated.
If you want to make a clean install of the new OS X Mavericks or even the older versions of Mac OS X, than I strongly suggest you to create a bootable OS X key or a drive.
Mountain Lion enables you to set notification alerts to remind you of upcoming birthdays, tasks, meetings and other important events you might have in your calendar.
If you are more of a visual person and would like to organize your folders and files using different colors, than check it out how to use color labels in Mac OS X.