I think we can make this an even more useful thread by discussing setups for speeding up workflow...hotkey setups/shelves/marking menus. I suppose this will depend on the version of Maya one is using to a degree but I'm always on the hunt for ways to work faster. When I started out with Maya 4, I never used shelves at all—it was all hotbox and custom marking menus. I remember the authors of Maya Fundamentals 4 had an interesting, easy to remember modeling setup back then by assigning hotkeys to custom marking menus and dividing each menu into 'creation' (primitives, poly tool) and editing. so for example:

alt + c = marking menu for creating objects
alt + shift + c = common editing tools (split, extrude, bevel, cut, etc.)

Then you just do a similar thing for nurbs/surfaces/curves,etc.

Of course this was before Maya started integrating their context sensitive ctrl + right-click menus on edges and whatnot.

Anyway, later on, when I did Kari's Apache tutorial, I realized how much quicker I was with shelves than with finding things in the hotbox. Cue where we're at today...I haven't really done much customizing, yet (laziness) but there are things that weren't integrated in older versions (without using MJ Polytools or the like) that I'm using now. In an effort to speed up flow, I've been playing with custom hot keys for inserting or creating edge loops rather than digging for it through the whole ctrl-right clicking.

I still find the recent list of commands in the hotbox indespensible. And the G key of course.