Here are some tips I extracted from one of the Magic Lantern Guides (Canon EOS 60D by Michael Guncheon).
1. Set Auto Power Off for a reasonable amount of time. The default is 30 seconds which for the average user is too short; you spend a lot of time waiting for the camera to wake up at that setting. I use four minutes and battery life doesn't suffer appreciably, although I do have a spare battery, something you might want to consider.
2. Adjust the eyepiece, specificaly the diopter adjustment. This is important if you wear glasses, especially bifocals or some othe form of reading glasses.
3. Choose your file size. Consider shooting RAW because you can do so much more in post processing and you can always generate a JPG. Some people shoot both RAW and JPG. I shoot large RAW and the smallest JPG because I can generate large JPG (for printing, competitions, etc.) after doing my post processing. The downside is RAW images can be large, 18 to 20 Mbytes each but a 16 gig card will hold over 500 images as I recall.
4. Set the preferred shooting mode. These are the settings like Tv, Av or M. These settings also allow you to then set the Picture Style which you should investigate. I keep going back to RAW and here again you can change the picture style after taking an image if you use RAW.
5. Review the focusing mode to see if it suits your style. Do a lot of sports? You might find AI Servo to be best for you.
6. Pick a drive mode; i. e., single, high speed continuous, low-speed continuous, self-timer.
7. Review the metering mode, i. e., evaluative, partial, spot, or center weighted. Evaluative is a good general purpose point as long as you understand when to change to one of the others. A picture of something backlit for instance might best be done with spot metering. After using the camera a bit you might want to investigate dailing in some exposure compensation (EC). Many of us find in general that Canon cameras need about +2/3 stop of EC.
8. Review white balance and what it means. Automatic (AWB) does a decent job but for special circumstances you may wish to change it. One of the advantages of RAW is this can be changed later should you not get it correct the first time.
9. Review ISO settings and how to change them. I do landscape work, and generally 200 or 400 works well since I'm often outdoors in bright sun or close to bright sun. But if you are doing interior pictures of children you might want to run that up to 1600 or even 3200 and take advantage of available light. The 60D can deliver decent images up to 3200 but above that almost certainly some noise reduction techniques will need to be applied in post processing. Easy to do with the Canon supplied software, especially if you shoot RAW. Picking an ISO should be done with consideration of other factors, like depth of field. For that child lit by candlelight (indoors) you might want to shoot with an ISO of 100 so the lens is wide often. This will put the main subject in focus and throw the background out of focus so it doesn't distract from the main subject.
10. Adjust the review time. After you take a picture the image will appear on the LCD screen, but the default is only 2 seconds. You might wish to bump this up, I use 8-seconds. Consider as well what you display. Personally I display the image plus the RGB histogram. The histogram tells you a lot of information about the exposure. I figure that is the key to a good image. I can tweak composition and other variables later in post processing.
11. There is a "Release Shutter without card setting", discussed at the bottom of page 32 of the manual. By default the camera will allow you to take a picture without a memory card being installed. This is an in-store mode for demonstrations. I would disable this setting so that you inadvertently don't take that absolutely great picture and find you lost it because a card wasn't installed.
