As I spent 25+ years as a vegetarian, have been studying meat cookery in the last couple years. Here’s something I found on Quora, that I’ve edited a bit. Please add your own secrets to this thread 
-
Let the steak come to room temperature. Never cook a cold steak. The temperature difference will make the meat tense up. It is a muscle, treat it as such. You would not go polevaulting without having done a warmup, would you?
-
While you do prep for the side dishes, put your preferred pan on the heat and let it heat up slowly. A hot pan is your friend! Most professionals love cast iron. Prepare everything you need and make sure you will not have to check on your potatoes or strain your broccoli in the midst of cooking your steak. I always make my side dishes in the oven when I make steak, so I have room on the stove and no extra stressy factors like overcooking the potatoes.
-
Pepper/spice and salt your steak to taste. Pepper burns quite quickly, if you do not like that taste you can pepper your steak after cooking or pepper/spice the sauce you will use (ground Coriander as well as fresh shredded Ginger can be pretty amaaaazing).
-
If your pan is hot enough, put in some good fat. Make sure you use an oil with a high smokepoint. Want to check if your pan is hot enough? Put your hand under the tap and flick a single drop of water at the pan, from a distance. If the water pops, your pan is hot.
-
If you have a steak with a nice fatty side, sear that part first. Hold the steak with two hands and let the fatty side sear. It might cause hot fat to dance up, hurting your hands if they are not used to it. Fat on a steak takes longer to be cooked than the meat itself and if you sear this before the meat, the fat running out of this part will give the rest of the sear a beautiful taste.
-
Once you seared the fatty side enough, put down your steak. Always lay something away from you when working with hot oil.
-
Keep the steak moving in the pan, so that it can grab all the heat and oil in the pan.
-
Depending on the thickness of the steak, you will want to flip the steak after 2 minutes. If it is a very thick steak it will take longer. Don’t worry if you flipped your steak too soon, you can always give it an extra turn if needed. Be wary with turning it too late though!
-
If you feel like it is all going too fast, don’t be afraid to play with the temperature of the stove or take out the steak completely. Having all your ingredients ready will reduce the stress. This is not a dish you can take your eyes off, so make sure everything you need is at the tip of your fingers.
-
Flipping sorcery: once you’ve flipped the steak once, drop in a few thick knobs of butter, then a spicing formula (for French, a slightly crushed piece of garlic, a spring of rosemary and thyme - for Italian, garlic, fennel seeds and some crushed red pepper - for Asian, garlic, fresh ginger, and some fennel/coridaner etc 0 and baste it to high heaven. Basting is feeding the steak flavor, improving the sear and it makes you feel like a professional in general. Tilt your pan and scoop the melted flavoured butter over the steak. You will see the hot butter searing the outside. As soon as you see the garlic browning, take it out.
-
If you pan sear meat, always keep the resting time in mind. When you take the meat out, it will continue to cook. Do you want a medium steak? Take it out when it feels a bit on the rare side. Let your meat rest in a warm covered dish. While your meat rests, you can make an amazing sauce with the brown bits in the pan. Saute mushrooms and/or onions in the pan and take them out, deglaze the pan with red wine and the juice that came out of the meat from resting, let reduce and take off the heat. Put in some small knobs of cold butter and whisk it in. Put the juice through a fine mesh sieve and you will have a velvet smooth “jus” for over your steak.
