I'm not an anal person, but for some reason, I'm anal about how I clean my lenses of my high end optics (Premiers). I won't touch or rub them without going through my "ritual":
1. Blow as much of the crap out out of the objective and ocular bell as I can with my breath - take care to not be too close or you'll moisten the lens with the humidity of your breath.
2. Blast as much of the crap out as I can with canned air.
3. LIGHTLY brush the lenses with a lens pen.
4. Blast the crap out again with canned air.
5. Spray a bunch of Zeiss lens cleaner onto the lens, creating a little pool inside the bell. Swish/slosh that around for a bit.
6. Using a q-tip, I go around the outside perimeter (where most of the residual crap will accumulate) with the qtip, Changing qtips early and often to minimize crap build up on the qtip.
7. Reapply the lens cleaner, repeat the qtip around the perimeter thing. Continue this until their is NO crap getting onto the qtip.
Note: At this point, I haven't rubbed the lens at all, anywhere except the outer perimeter where it is least likely to have an impact on optical quality should it be scratched.
8. Reapply a little lens cleaner and rub in an outward spiral with the qtip, changing qtips early and often
9. Once it is sufficiently clean, I dry the lens with qtips.
10. Last thing I do is remove any smudge left over by the qtip using the rubbing end of the lens pen.
NOTE: I'm extremely careful with the rubbing end of the lens pen - it ONLY touches glass that is 100% clean and the cap is left on until 1 second before it touches the lens, and the cap is back on within 1 second of coming off the lens.
Last thing, is I don't clean my lenses often. I avoid it like the plague. The special coatings *do* wear off a bit each cleaning, no matter how careful you are. Cleaning less often means the coatings are less likely to be scratched from cleaning, and maximizes the lens coating life.