What are good things to look at when evaluating positions?

Obviously there'd be obvious things like looking for tactics, but sometimes I feel like there's more subtle things that I just haven't considered to factor into my evaluation when trying to process how to move forward. Perhaps there's some decent/good players out there who can enlighten me about what goes through their head everytime they want to make a move, especially the moves that take place at the critical moments in the game, such as transition into middlegame/endgame.

What would be especially helpful is if I were in a time crunch, what should I be prioritizing my mind to be running through?

There's a lot more than tactics:

1. Plan - Without a plan, your play is useless.  Things to consider are whether the center is open or closed.  If closed, which way are your pawns pointing (that's the side you should be attacking, regardless of whether that's the side that features your opponent's King)
2. Weaknesses in both yours and your opponent's camp.  That could be weak pawns, who has the weaker king, or simply weak squares, like in the Stonewall Dutch, e5 is a major weakness for Black.  It doesn't have to be a square occupied by a piece for it to be a weakness.
3. Candidate moves.  Look for the candidates before you go down the rabbit trail of calculating the first move you see for ever and a day.
4. Threats - What are your opponent's threats, and I don't just mean 1-move threats.  There may be something he could do if he had 4 moves in a row.  That determines how much time you have to stop it, and whether you need to be defending now, or can play a move or two before stopping your opponent's cr@p!

For a static evaluation of the position I look at things like who has more active minor pieces (if anyone), pawn structure (damaged structure can mean easy targets, if nothing else for the endgame), space, and king safety.

For moves, a big one is maximizing how many squares a piece controls. So open files, ranks and diagonals. Notice that whenever you move a piece, it will often block other pieces too. So for example moving your queen onto the same diagonal as your bishop can be a good way to pile up an attack... but if there's no useful attack you're just blocking the bishop.

With so many pieces you'll sometimes need to weigh the pros and cons of different choices. If you're forced to retreat your queen, you may put her on a square where she's a little less active herself, but where you're not blocking any of your other pieces, so in terms of total piece activity it's a good choice.

As an example sometimes you want a bishop on d3... but if your opening often involves opening the d file later, then later in the game that d3 bishop will be blocking a future rook on d1.

A common obstacle here is your own pawns. Lets say a knight is well centralized, but all its forward squares are your own pawns. If some of those pawns are very weak and important, great. But if not, the knight is a very passive piece and needs to be put somewhere else.

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Another idea is thinking of the board as split between kingside and queenside. This is especially true for pawn structures like the advance french when both sides main pawn chains are locked with each other.

White's natural play is on the kingside, and black's is on the queenside because that's where each player has a natural space advantage. Space (the squares behind your pawns) means more maneuverability for your pieces. It's often either technically difficult, or impossible, to completely defend against your opponent's play when they have a space advantage like this. Correct is to counter attack in your area. Defensive moves are not bad of course, but when there's a lull in the action, you often need something active to do and make your opponent worry about.

 This is really hard to answer, it's sort of like asking how to play chess

Hmm, maybe to say it simply, if you have
1) active pieces
2) targets (like opponent's pawns that can't be defended by other pawns) and
3) a safe king

Then your position is generally good.

Of course these things are relative. If your king is opened up, but your opponent's is under immediate attack (and there are no attackers near your king) then your king is fine.

 Unfortunately in time pressure you often only have time to calculate forcing moves. Your goal is to find safe moves that don't immediately lose. Try to keep all your pieces defending each other and if possible trade off your opponent's most active pieces (this usually simplifies the position).

This was pretty in depth. Thanks for taking the time to write out a response. I'd consider myself not bad per se to the point where I understand that you want to develop pieces in the opening instead of hoping my opponent is an idiot and letting my scholars mate, but not at the point where I'm able to evaluate why some moves are less obviously bad. This helped a bit, thank you!

In a nutshell....

1. Expand your position:

a. Gain more space.

b. Improve the position of your pieces.

2. Decide on what side of the board to play.

a. Queenside: a-c files.

b. Center: d-e files.

c. Kingside: f-h files.

Factors to consider:

Space.

Material.

Weakness(es)

3. DO NOT HURRY.  Regroup your pieces, and be patient.

It's hard to answer... there's so much experienced players take for granted, and sometimes the way a question is worded leads the answer into something the person asking doesn't really care about.

If you posted a game or position and made the question about a specific move that would be easier.

It's also hard to know what's useful... during my games I like to imagine weak pawns are like magnets, attracting minor pieces (friendly minors to defend them, and enemy minors to attack them).

But, depending on how new a player is, they may not even know what a weak pawn is. Or maybe in their games, they always try to attack weak pawns but it never works due to other things going on in the position, so this advice is frustrating to them.

Anyway, I'm glad it helped a bit

Well said binary.  Without an example, all we can do is give general principles, and ideas.

1. King safety

2. Piece Activity

3. Space

4. Targets

5. Pawn Structure

Here's my short list.  

1) Look at dynamics on the board.  Identify anything your opponent has done where the is an imbalance in the positions that requires an immediate response.  

2) Analyze forcing moves - forcing moves include checks and captures.  They are any move that the opponent is forced or must reasonably respond.  

3) Develop a plan - pick a specific target.  Some square or weakness on the board and build a plan to attack it.

4) Develop your pieces to follow the plan.

5) If all else fails, figure out what your worst piece is on the board, and improve or trade it.  You can almost always find a piece that could be better placed.  Do something about it.