Bring to a boil enough water to accommodate the pasta you intend to cook. Adding room temperature noodles to hot water drops the temperature of the water. If that temperature drop is too drastic, your pasta won't cook properly. The higher your water to noodle ratio, the less chance there is that the temperature drop will ruin your shot at the perfect pasta.

You almost always want to cook pasta in heavily seasoned water. Add salt until it tastes about as salty as the sea. Certainly offensive to drink, but not unpleasant to taste.

Add pasta to boiling water, and stir to separate. Some pasta shapes have a tendency to stick together while cooking. The only way to avoid this is with cautious stirring.

Cook pasta until nearly edible. It should still have a slight bite to it, such that it would be unpleasant to eat as is.

At this moment, using a kitchen spider or a pasta spoon, move the noodles from the boiling water into your waiting sauce. It is always advisable, when possible, to finish the cooking of a pasta in it's sauce.

Keep in mind that a pasta, like a piece of meat, does not just stop cooking the moment it leaves the fire. There is a very small window of time during which it will be most enjoyably consumed. Your goal is for that window to open up at the very moment your pasta leaves the fork.