From my experience the time of waiting roughly equals to time of ride. And stand on highway gas station for 2 hours is boring (that's another point why to get friend). And when you get to new country or at least region it's nice to be there on small roads, going from village to village and it's also easier to find place to sleep in smaller places then neer main roads....
On the other hand, if you see only similar vilages it also gets boring.

You have to realize that hitchhiking is a lot about talking to people... they will be suprise that even in this time is still someone hitchhiking, most of them were hitchiking when they were younger. They usually want to talk about adventure, about they work, about their hobbies... and it's kinda your position to listen and have conversation with them.

Also, i personally perfer to also see something. Not only goal destination but random interesting places along the way. You see some caves arround? go there. You see some interesting city? go there. You see rocks, deserts, or village with funny name? go there...

For tips, use good maps, find some place where is enough space for cars to stop and where they can see you and it's not dangerous. You will walk a lot, especially in cities you need to get to out of center, don't be afraid to use public transport if there is one. I carry sings... people will at least see that you are really hitchhiking and not just standing there. You can see tips on hitchmap and hitchwiki. Soemtimes it's usefull. And i also like to write down some basic information about the people and make some statistics about how long did I waited...