What does quality chess study actually look like for a beginner?

I'm currently 900ish on chess.com. I've played over 1800 games online over the years but haven't improved significantly because of a very careless and thoughtless approach, which I enjoyed. I've decided I want to get better now and I really don't understand what good chess study looks or is structured like.

Should I just do a couple sessions with a local chess coach to learn how to structure study/analyse my games?

I feel like all the chess books I see are too simple (one chapter for how each piece moves) or too hard (intricacies of the c6 opening for black).

I have the premium membership and can analyse my games. I suppose the chess university on here could be an option.

Can anyone advise me on how to structure good study and what to spend my time on? Blindly playing games online with reckless Abandon is fun but an ineffective way to improve.

With your experience of playing games, I'm sure you'll see that most of your games are decided by tactics. You've not reached the stage yet of not giving your pieces away and always taking your opportunities to take their pieces with a combination if it's there. So for improving beyond your current rating tactics should be your main studying area. Please note that studying tactics isn't just doing puzzles. It also means learning about the tactics and learning about how you can spot tactics with solving strategies that you can also use in your games. In the Netherlands we use the 'stepmethod' for this and it's out in English too. I really like this series, because it does explain tactics and solving strategies (the last mostly in the manual) and not only gives a ton of exercises, but also some basic important information and exercise in basic endgames.  For your current rating step 2 and 3, maybe 4 for the future would be great additions to studying tactics. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just think it's a very good series and you can find their website by googling stepmethod and chess. 

The 2nd part of your study in my eyes should be to study the middlegame. Learn all you can about playing normal moves. Just making your pieces happy and knowing what weaknesses are should help your game. Tactics would be the main study focus, as this decides most of your games, but when there are no tactics you'd be able to play normal moves. I don't like the fact that there are few online resources on this. One way of doing it at the moment, could be to look at stronger players playing blitz and commenting on their games on youtube. You'd want to look for the moves they play instantly: like a rook to an open file. Just always try and ask yourself: what are they doing with their pieces? Silman has good books on the middlegame too, so you could learn it from him too. 

The other areas of chess are not so important to you right now. Don't study the endgame, because you'll not reach the endgame with equal material. There's no need to study much endgame if you're a piece up. Just try and make a passed pawn and trade pieces and you'll likely win. 

The opening is equally unimportant. You can play openings with the basic principles of openings: getting control over the centre (white wants e4-d4, black wants to prevent it), develop as fast as you can (move each piece only once and immediately to an active square) and get your king safe. That way you'll likely have at least an equal position coming out of the opening and at your level will likely be better already most times.

So, in short: loads of tactics (doing mostly exercises, but not forgetting to learn about different tactics and learning how to spot them) and some middlegame strategy on how to make your pieces happy and how to attack/deal with weaknesses.

This is a phenomenally good answer and exactly what I'm looking for. I'll look into the Silman books/course.

EDIT: I ordered the Step 2 of the Step Method and Art of Middlegames by Silman

As a non titled player that has no coaching experience, my intuition and what I have seen tell me it's bad to focus so much on tactics. If a beginner wants to win and crush their opponents, then yeah, by all means become a tactical monster. Otherwise, I suggest to do less tactics and adopt a more balanced study regime involving deep understanding of chess, not just tactical patterns.

But, what do I know, right? The CM most likely is right. I just consider that well meaning but downtrodden advice to be almost worthless to people whose main goal is to understand chess and then get to play more interesting games. If all you want in chess is to win (especially at shorter time controls over the internet), then tactics is the way to go.

Always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it. As long as you hang pieces and pawns, all study is useless.

Whenever you lose a game, you should analyse it thoroughly so as to learn from your mistakes.

Study of annotated grandmaster games is good: learn from the best.

You should train tactics and achieve a tactics puzzle rating higher than the play rating you aim at.

Study endgames: first 3 men, then 4 men, then 5 men.

I dislike the Step Method and Silman books.

One thing I might add to this is...

Find/join a group or club of players who are slightly better than you.

If you could find a couple of people who are 1100-1300, play daily games, and put considerable thought/time into making your moves as well as analyzing the games. You will improve as you take the time to increase your calculation ability (take your time before you make a move!) and as you see and analyze the types of moves the slightly stronger players are making.

Not that I am any kind of expert but I have noticed that people who take the approach as described by CM RAU4ever seem to make huge gains. Thanks CM RAU4ever for the guidance! 
I have been playing chess now for around one year and have mostly just been focusing on understanding beginner tactics.

I have a local-ish club I planned to join but most of the players there are FIDE 1500 to 2000 rated. I played a few games with them and even going easier on me I was absolutely crushed. I moved further away from them recently and also I've filled my time with a lot of non-chess stuff so that's not a good option.

I appreciate the advice of everyone here but with all due respect I'm taking the titled player's advice. Not just because they're titled but because in my experience having a structured program of study that builds on previous knowledge and progressively increases in complexity and difficulty is exactly the way to learn solid fundamental skills and get measurable improvements in anything.

I'm not looking to become a titled player or anything like that and I don't need the perfect study program. I just want to know that what I'm doing will be structured and lead to measurable improvements. As a chess outsider it seems tricky to navigate the space of books and if I'm going to study alone then a structured self-study course I can do with a physical board seems like the way to go.

One of the periods where I improved the most was playing at a club where the weakest player (besides me) was 1500. Most of them were 1800-2000. I had to work extremely hard every night to not lose every game. We'd analyze afterwards. They played with rapid time controls. It was a great learning experience.

But sure, I was better than you are now, and losing all the time can be demoralizing, so it's not for everyone.

Their advice was very good (tactics and middlegames). Silman is sorta meh, but you didn't actually order a Silman book anyway (lol). The art of the middle game is by Keres and Kotov (two of the strongest players to never be world champion, so while I haven't heard of the book, they're very good authors and it has good reviews on Amazon).

Anyway, just to add a bit about the tactics, I'd say it's important to review every puzzle after you finish it. Did you actually understand it? Why didn't other defenses work? Why didn't other winning tries work? And also very important is to retry every puzzle you fail (but not immediately, wait a few days so you're not just playing it from memory after reviewing the solution).

If you fail a puzzle a 2nd time, that's fine. Wait a few days and try again. Keep doing this until you get it right on the first try. If a puzzle is very difficult, you'll probably just end up memorizing it, but that's fine. The point is you're learning new patterns and ideas. This is one reason I liked doing puzzles from a book better than online (puzzles are not tailored to your level in a book, so some of them are too hard to solve).

Anyway, I've heard good things about the stappenmethode thing. I thought the books were out of print, so I'm glad you were able to order one / some.

Complements to @DiscipulusIncautus for this question. I see variations of this questions almost daily on this forum, usually low effort posts by people too lazy to perform a Google search.  The way you phrased your question is perfect and it generates valuable and helpful replies.

@RAU4ever Thanks for your contribution, it's appreciated. I hadn't heard of the step method, so I'll check it out. (Btw, I also looked at the 'stappenmethode', but that's not for me, It's been over 2 decades since I've consumed Dutch chess content and it feels surprisingly archaic, lol. I'll use the English version. ). Anyway, at first glance, it looks solid. I'm going to look into it more.

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

I recommend finding a few chess friends (online or irl) and analyzing with them (especially if they are a bit higher rated) and learning how they approach it. There really is a learning curve to learning how to learn when it comes to chess xD

If you like, we could play some unrated live chess sometime for learning (to give us material to review) and you could get a feel for the process I use.

I took the liberty of checking a couple of your games. Your two most recent losses were 15 minute Rapid games with 10 sec increment. In both games you had more time on the clock when you resigned than when the game started.  The time format permits 20-30 seconds per move, you spend around 3 seconds per move. I can assure you that your play will improve if you take more time to consider each move.

With regards to endings, CM RAU4ever's statement is correct in that one side will have a large material advantage. However, it is essential (if you don't know how to do them already) to know the following endings and able to execute them every time without fail:

King, Queen and Rook vs King (i.e. the ladder mate)

King and Queen vs King

King and Rook vs King

King and Pawn vs King (how to promote the pawn, and how to achieve a draw if necessary)

Firstly, thanks everyone for their kind words. However, guys, watch out with the attitude of assuming that a titled player will be right or that their advice is always golden. Everyone can make mistakes and there are plenty of strong players that have never really been in your situation. Me too: I've not been stuck at 1000. So always be ready to question what anyone says, even when it's a strong GM. 

What Wornaki says is true in a way. Training and getting stronger has to be a fun experience. Just doing tactics might get boring and tedious. It's always important to ask yourself whether you still like what you're doing, cause it's more important to like the game and keep playing it, than burning yourself out. And if your goal is to get a deeper understanding of the game, then I would advice a slightly different approach. That was not OP's question though. (Good on you OP on getting the 2nd step. Note that 3rd step will be more of a challenge (especially if you find the 2nd to be a bit too easy). 

One thing I did still want to point out though, Wornaki, is that I think studying the middlegame as I suggested to do alongside tactics would satisfy your need to understand the game on a deeper level and to play more interesting games. The middlegame is extremely rich. And the middlegame will always have interesting points in relation to the opening and the endgame. Learning about bad bishops, will give you a different appreciation of the French opening for example. At the same time the reverse is not so true: if you'd study the French first without learning about bad bishops, you might not understand why the bad bishop is a problem or how to play with it. That's why studying the opening without at least a good understanding of the middlegame is not so efficient. And learning about how to dominate a knight with your bishop, will give you more understanding of the endgame. Middlegame strategy will be important or applicable in every game, however, while studying the endgame (rook endgames or B vs N for example) might not come up at your level for a long time. I know from experience that if you study something but never get it on the board, that you in the end will forget most of the things you've studied. So while I think endgame study has its time and place too, I don't think it's right now for the level of OP's playing strength. It's not so efficient. 

I am not a titled player but i would like to still give an advice which worked very well for me. For starters, dont read any books on strategy since that is completely irrelevant. In my experience and in the words of the greatest player ever Bobby Fischer, the core of chess skill is being able to visualize future positions in your head. He said that being able to see "if i move here, he moves here, i move here" etc etc will directly impact your chess strength. Try hard to visualize, very hard. Try to track pieces in your mind as you plan moves. Just do this exercise for a few days.

Think of it like an FPS game. The core skill of an FPS game is to be able to aim right? all the strategy like taking the high ground, star formation etc has no meaning if you can't aim at all. Chess is the same, strategy is useless unless u are able to clearly see in your mind certain positions ahead. 

Look up the game of any lower rated players on the website(less than 1300 elo) and then look for moves which the computer tells as mistake, try to find why it was a mistake. See in your head "if i take this, he takes this, i do this, he does that" and then see the final position. Once u get good at visualization that alone will skyrocket your ratings.

At my local club I was feeling demoralised after losing every game when I another player joined at my level. First night we played two games and won one each. Second night I won both games. He ended up leaving the club, but the experience of beating him gave me more confidence.

I once managed to get a draw against one of the stronger players, who is rated about 500 points above me. He had an off game, and although he was a pawn up, the endgame position was equal and we agreed the draw. You have to take the positives and build on those things. 

When you play against stronger players and then go back to playing against someone at your own rating, those games feel a whole lot easier than they otherwise would.

I would recommend:

- Play slow games and try to find improvements.

- Do daily tactics / puzzles

- Read a book on basic strategy for lower intermediate players. There are a lot: Silman's "Amateur's mind", Chernev's game collection "Move by Move" or Capablanca's book...

I disagree. Reading strategy books should be avoided by beginners and they should just practice looking ahead and tactics