Yeah don't be afraid to engage with the other players at the table when you're playing live. Managing your image is a whole other thing you have to do live that you don't even think about online. That doesn't mean you have to be yapping away the whole time, but it generally helps to cultivate at least an affable / likeable persona. If you're the antisocial guy that avoids talking to anyone and rarely plays
hands the other players will pick up on that quickly and it can make it hard to get paid when you have a big hand.
Plus you'll be watching the action of the other players, looking for tells or betting patterns, and there's all sorts of other stuff that'll be occupying your mind on a constant basis live that you just take for granted online such as keeping track of pot and stack sizes: live poker doesn't have a HUD so you actually have to
think about that stuff.
Aside from that, why is it you think all live poker players shuffle their chips incessantly? Gotta kill the rest of the time doing something