Unpredictability and fear

Something a good player said to me after saying he folded on the turn to my pot-sized bet on the turn on a Td 7c 2h Kd board (I had 79d and min raised the flop):

"What did you have? I had TA. Boy, you scare me. I just never know what you have."

Unpredictability is key in poker, especially NL. I would say it's the third most important "rule" or guideline (after "Play tight aggressive" and "Never tilt.")

Switch things up: make a stone cold bluff on 23o or 47o and show it when you take it down on the flop, raise suited connectors occasionally from EP and MP, do lots of semibluffing, sometimes limp-reraise big pocket pairs when you're first in the pot, set up a bluff on a later street with a min raise, etc..

Acting erratically makes it very hard for other players to read you, and is imperative to getting maximum value from your good hands. This is even more true in a live game, where people are paying more attention. Just make sure you don't overdo it, because that's when the odds turn against you and you start leaking away money.

To be a good poker player you have to be unpredictable and able to "change gears". How you do this though should be left to other factors like your table image and your opponents. For instance, if youve been sitting at a table for a while playing like a rock for ages and you havent been caught bluffing yet, then you have ample bluffing equity.
General rule it to play loose when your opponents are playing tight, and vice versa.

If you have been constantly bluffing and stealing more than your share of pots, and a couple opponents wise up to that fact, then its time to change gears. The players who notice that you are playing LAGG and start to playback at you, they are the people you need to be aware of. You need to be more careful against them and attack them with good solid holdings (whilst at the same time, still blissfully running over the rest of the people at the table)

I absolutely agree that you need to mix it up and change gears... but that doesn't mean to get stupid. There's really nothing wrong with raising the occasional rags UTG as long as you're smart enough to get away with it. Every so often in a game I'll say to myself "No matter what the next hand is, I'm playing it like Aces." You'd be surprised how well this works, if you pick the right spot.

You've got to be willing to give up on it, though, if you're played back at... but it's a great tactic. Particularly if you're a noted TAGG... Do this, show it, then go back to your regularly scheduled game. You'll get more action.

IMHO, I think that you should stick to a "solid" game about 80% of the time, and mix it up with some tricky play and some bluffing the other 20%. Some players tend to take the "randomness" to the extreme, and get burned by a solid player in the long run. However this 80/20 rule has nothing to do with switching gears, as the atmosphere at the table should tell you when to do that, and is absolutely imperative that you switch gears every so often. I just find that when I tend to get too tricky with my plays, I end up hurting myself in the long run. But generally yeah, I agree, instead of just your standard 3xBB raise on a made hand, mix in some check raises, check/call down to the river, min raise, slow play, jump AI sometimes... Show some crap, show some monsters, there's no way they could get a read on you.