Curious to know what kind of things people do when they sit down to do work/an essay/study.

I'm actually in the middle of an essay right now (currently taking a little break) and I've found that randomly getting up when I get a bit tired and pumping out some sets of x? exercise gets my mind back into gear.
I also like to stop and meditate for 5-10 minutes if I can't concentrate, as well as having classical music in the background to increase my brains overall activity and make sure I'm really absorbing everything I read/write.

Please, share any tips you might have that increase your productivity!

I procrastinate.

Oh, increase productivity?

Don't know about increase or decrease productivity, but I usually have a pencil or pen or something in my mouth at all times. Used to smoke, so I guess the habit lingers. I have tons of little quirks and habits like that, but none of the others are work/study specific.

At work things sometimes get done automatically in order for time to go by faster.

I drink 5 mugs of espresso.

Once I get started on a project, I will get engaged in the work and I won't be distracted easily. This helps balance the fact that I procrastinate until I have just enough time to get an assignment done anyway.

I work for five minutes and then get distracted by the internet for thirty. Rinse and repeat.

Hey, congrats on stopping
I often find myself imitating the action of lifting a lit cigarette (or something else which I probably shouldn't mention) to my mouth with whatever's in my hand, which is strange as I've never really been a smoker. Random habit I've picked up I suppose

This is what I'm usually like, but I've been getting better at getting stuff done recently

Well whether I'm doing homework, writing stories or simply playing solitaire, I prefer to have music running with headphones. This shuts out all of the noise outside and lets me concentrate on whatever I'm doing. A cup of coffee beforehand would help. Just get started, crank it up and before you know it you're done. There's a small problem: the kind of music. I find that classical music helps with second languages(Chinese, in my case at least) and for everything else I stick to my usual drive-me-on progressive metal.

I don't have a job. I also didn't do any work projects or essays at school. Mainly because I have to know 100% of the subject before I would be happy trying to write an essay on it. The drip-feed method of school just turned me off from doing it, illogical when you've only studied 10% of the work at hand. I tend to leave anything I have to do to the very last minute or just do it when I feel a sudden desire to do so.

I tend to listen to music when 'working' or whatever though.

Oh, and I listen to jazz and classical music while doing assignments. It doesn't increase the productivity, but you feel more classy doing them.

I look at it, throw it in a corner, and don't do it until the day before it is due.

Can't really provide any good tips since I tend to essays at the last minute. But when I do them, I tend to take little breaks here and there.

Classical actually does increase productivity
It engages both the left and right sides of your 3rd brain (I forget the proper name, it's the one humans have), one of which focuses on details and the other of which views things as a whole. I need to brush up on my knowledge of this stuff, but basically, classical = winning.

I tend to finish my assignments the very day that they're due. Livin' on the edge, here.

I used to work from home, which was awesome: the commute to work was across the landing and I could turn up in my pyjamas! There were a lot of other nice things about it, not least that I could use the answering machine to screen out the boring project manager's calls: it limited voicemails to 30 seconds (memory was expensive then) and he was unable to ever get to the point in ten times that amount of time. On the plus side, I could have endless coffee and cigarette breaks, on the minus I tended to "go to work" at 3am if I had a good idea: in fact some research showed that in common with other home workers, it's not under-work that's the problem, but over-work.

Still, it could get quite hot and sweaty during the summer: for reasons that were never apparent, the boiler lived in the airing cupboard which was part of the room I used as my office, which combined with the minicomputer I worked on (that's "mini" in comparison to a mainframe... it wasn't actually mini at all) meant an awful lot of heat was being chucked out. But I didn't mind, it meant I had home internet access before there was much in the way of dial-up ISPs, and it whizzed along at 64 Kbits when those who did have online access had a 14.4 Kbit modem at best.

To actually get to the point, the best way of increasing my productivity was to be well away from the project manager and other time-wasters who prevented me doing my job. Probably the most enjoyable and productive time of my career.

Not if you spend all your time listening to it and not working like I do when I put on music.

Music of any genre is nothing more than a distraction, actually.

Work? I'm not familiar with this word.





....I just obsess over things until I either finish, or finally drop from exhaustion.

Put on good music that won't distract (instrumentals) and do it til its done.