One of my favorite things in Maya is the humble "g" key, which repeats the last maya command. Most Maya users are likely familiar with it, but I often seen people going back and forth to menus in a slow lumbering fashion where the "g" key would have made quick work out of it. They just didn't think to use the "g" key. When in doubt just try it, you can always undo if didn't do what you wanted.

If you ever find yourself looping between selection and a menu item try hitting the "g" instead of the menu. It greatly speeds up such tasks, and is easier on the brain. It is sort of an all purpose hotkey for people like me who can't remember all the other hotkeys( and of course there is not room on the keyboard to hotkey everything ).

For example create a poly object, select a face and then extrude with the extrude tool. Now select another face and hit "g" instead of the extrude menu and repeat as desired. Or create a curve with the cv curve tool then hit "g' to create another. I've had cases where I needed to create hair constraints between dozens of pairs of cvs and the "g" key made it practical to do...drag select, menu:create hair constraint; drag select, "g"; drag select, "g";...

Of course if you find your self frequently performing a dumb iterative task then you should also consider writing a mel script. Language is ultimately more powerful and expressive than menu driven systems.

"g" is one of the hottest of the hotkeys. If you have any favorite hotkey tricks, please share in the comments here.