So, my best tip to have a "successful" hunt would be to define what you want to accomplish on your hunt before you go.

Things that go into defining my goals are:
- time I have to detect
- what I'm tying to find
- where I am detecting

Examples:
- is it a short hunt in a park? If so, I will normally just dig high tones to maximize my chance to finding a coin.
- is it a long hunt on an old 1700s/1800s farm field? If so, I would dig everything. I've spent 8+ hours on fields before and have dug amazing coins or military buttons that had really iffy signals or odd VDIs.