How to improve at tactics

I thought that too. I like chess tempo tactics because they have rated tactics and as you get better , so does the tactics get harder

None (I haven't used the TT here much).

But in the past I worked with the books "Sharpen Your Tactics" and "Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book"

I gave myself 2 hours for 12 to 16 puzzles. I would start with a few easy ones then work up to harder ones.

I did not take notes during solving -- only after I was done calculating a line I would write down the whole variation. After writing down all relevant variations for my solution I would go to the next puzzle.

Puzzles I missed I would mark and review later -- especially puzzles where I got the first move wrong.

I did this daily for about a month. Then I'd take a break from tactics and do something else. After a while I'd do this again for another month.

One thing that helped my tactics was learning other parts of the game (like positional play and endgames). It gave me an appreciation for things like piece activity and assigning roles to pieces, so then during puzzles I could more easily dismiss moves or variations on principal instead of needing to calculate them.

Chesstempo has been the best resource I've used.  

You can seriously just 'do the heck out of it' and improve your tactics significantly, as it'll autoscale to your ability level. 

I'm currently hitting a level on chesstempo at which forced defensive combos are very common, and it's something I'm particularly weak at. I have a bunch of books, but this theme is very underappreciated and not common in the tactics books I've done. 

Fortunately, it seems that other players of my ability have the same exact problem, so I get these defensive combos thrown at me at chesstempo quite a lot, and I'm gradually getting better at them.

I think the combination of near-limitless new combos to force you to practice de novo calculation (as opposed ot seeing the same old problems over and over again) and scaled-difficulty is a really potent combo.

(1) What type of tactics do you mean? There is a difference between typical opening/middlegame tactics, versus chess puzzle / premature end-of-game type of tactics.

(2) One suggestion that I thought was good, and that matched my experience, was this one:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/i-finally-learned-how-to-study-tactics-right-and-finally-improved-my-rating

But what do I know? Suddenly my TT ratings started going *down* recently, for some unknown reason.

The point is to enjoy tactics. Each puzzle is a different world waiting to be discovered. It's like art!! If you do it you feel great. If not , never mind! Play through the solution again and enjoy!

Just have in mind that despite what everyone is telling you here, tactics are not that important. Everyone will say that chess is "90% tactics", that's what I have been reading since I first asked myself how to improve.

It's FALSE, I've spent countless hours improving my tactics and it hasn't helped me that much, 1900 on chesstempo and arond the same here; and I still can't beat 1200 players regularly.

I think the reason is that tactics is easier because you KNOW there is something you need to calculate to win material/mate in a certain position. Doesn't matter how "complex" and tricky it is (this is what usually inflates the rating; because some tactic is "fancy" and some people get it wrong, you get more points. Don't fool yourself into thinking that now you are better because you solved that puzzle).

During a game this is different, you usually don't have any tactics and never reach the point where you can execute what you learned in tactics trainer, because you never get a good position. Remember to improve in all fronts, not just tactics.

Studying tactics i all about pattern recognition.  If youre geting a high tactics rating and still cant beat 1200 players?  Youre pattern recognition is not good.  Are you repeating the tactics you miss?

I had a similar experience to Mario_D, except I'm not 1900 on chesstempo - I'm 1650-1700.

For real, here were my ratings about 1.5 yrs ago:

Chesstempo tactics: 1630-1670

Chess.com blitz: 1200-1300

NOW:

Chesstempo tactics: 1650-1700

Chess.com blitz: 1500-1600 

As you can see, my chesstempo tactics haven't improved a whole lot (no surprise to me as I haven't been emphasizing them as much during that past year.)  

You can get pretty badly by mere 1200s if you're clueless about basic opening and positional play, which is what happened to me. Doesn't matter if you can calculate 10 move mates - if you aren't developing all your pieces, preserving pawn structure, etc., you won't even get a chance to strut your tactics stuff outside of gross hanging-piece blunders by the opponent.

And those hanging-piece blunders become vanishingly rare (confirmed by CPU analysis) when you play poor positional nontactical moves.  Even 1200s will rarely blunder if you play near-random moves that don't apply any pressure or threats.