I used to turn on creative or refund myself items/experience whenever I died a death I wasn't happy about, so obviously I did this everytime I died.
then I started using keepinventory and mobgriefing, but after a while, I just started dying on purpose just to get home faster.
those worlds I usually ended up trashing soon just because I made it myself so easy. after that I wanted a real challenge, so I turned all those things off and went full hardcore. but ofcourse after dying on some really good worlds, that wasn't the answer either.
so now I'm playing with some mods and specific configurations to make it all a bit fair. I'm using the gravestones mod so I don't lose items upon death and I'm using creepercollateral to make sure I can fill in those nasty creeperholes. I just wish there was also a way to store all your experience upon death, because the last few worlds, I'd say about 10 worlds in 2 days, I all ended up trashing because I died and lost most of my experience, and I just got extremely frustrated about that.
but now I'm thinking of switching to creative mode in certain cases, like going through the nether portal. I had a really good world, but when I went to the nether, I died in like a minute because of a stupid spawn. I had gravestones enabled, but I couldn't find my gravestone anymore because of lava lakes.