I thought I would share a program I found that many programmers use to keep their sanity and plan programs the program is "KeyNote" http://keynote.prv.pl. It is a tabbed notebook where you can structure ideas and plan strategies.
Works for me and keeps my hair on albeit totally white, must have been the wife and kids that did that to me

I am surprised, No comments, Don't you guys plan. Don't tell me you just go in boots and all and let the devil take the hindmost.

I tend to use Office OneNote which sounds the same as this program, or a good old fashioned note book and pen!

Not by a long chalk. this is something else. What do they say these days "It's Wicked". Like the saying you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. I just visited the site and downloaded a copy. Seems the support is waning. I do not want to loose it.

I'm afraid I'm the same as Simon, I use Microsoft OneNote also as well as a handful of notebooks that I keep handy on my desk for brainstorming things. I was going to look at that Keynote program but they make it so hard to actually get to the download and pop up ads at you that take up half the screen, doesn't make me comfortable with downloading from places that do that.

What support are you talking about Prism? Microsoft? I guess I haven't had the bad issues others have with them. The 3 times I've ever had to ask for help they've given it freely, and once had to send me a CD with the Windows Updates on it (many years ago when I was still on dialup lol) because my internet company had a 3 hour reconnect and it took 4 hours to get the downloads for Windows updates so I couldn't get them lol. Microsoft was very understanding and sent me the updates on a CD. Thought that was pretty good.

Not sure what other support you might be worried about there.

I'm thinking about investing in a filing cabinet as well. I bought a really nice desk, but I can't appreciate it due to all the notes and ideas etc. covering it.

At least this way I know exactly where everything is!

And regarding support from Microsoft; It's a long way off of CoffeeCup, but it is pretty good. I've always had my questions answered with around 2-3 days. I don't like having several different programs on my computer that I'm not going to use. I'm at least trying to keep my computer tidy!

Do you ever open the case and blow it out. Totally amazing how much dust accumulates. I wish it was worth something.

I've become and Evernote addict. I didn't think I would. But having a handy collection of notebooks online that I can access from ANYWHERE (laptop, web, Android, etc.) is a huge help. Vive la cloud!!!

I keep login stuff (thanks to encryption features) a notebook for each project, and I even have a "scraps" when I'm just copy and pasting code from one app to another and need a sticky note. Hotkeys make life SOOO much easier!

It is probably not well known it was creation by someone who passed it on. It is being maintained by someone else and it is not as full on as One Note. I have that in fact the full MS Office 10.
You are not kidding sounds you use Autohotkeys too. I combine their code with my VB style code, as creating compiled hot key applications takes a bucket more code in any VB style language.

I only offered it as a suggestion as it is a simple structured way of working
http://inkmon.coffeecup.com/storage/Key.jpg It is like an explorer type storage cabinet I just showed the left pane of one file. Clicking on the content opens in the right pane. It is simple but effective. Just a way for me to keep track of all the log ins for sites and work still to be done on one of my hosting's. I keep one file on each host. I have project files also structured. It is simple but I guess everyone has their favourite, It is just one of those programs that will dissapear. I have several copies and they work on all Op. Systems.

I keep that sort of information synchronized and available for use on multiple machines via a cloud storage service. After examining several alternatives, I settled on SpiderOak because it's free for the first 2GB of storage, keeps file versions available until I want to be rid of them, encrypts on the client machines (thus not letting the Internet or SpiderOak see the plain text or keys) and works with MS-Windows, Linux and MAC-OS. This amounts to a poor man's multi-platform, secure, backed up info cache.

For planning, I'm looking into so-called "mind mapping" software. There are many choices, a few of them open-source, multi-platform freeware. I haven't settled on one yet.

Mind mapping allows recording and expressing related ideas in the form of an acyclic graph that's easy to grasp and edit. Once the big picture is in place, most MM software allows backfilling with detail and perhaps related objects, such as images and URIs. Most MM software also can provide other views of the graph, such as a good, old hierarchical outline.

The graph captures dependency, so it's a relatively small step to add time as a metric scale, thereby yielding planning-oriented views such as Gannt and PERT charts.

MM might also be useful in writing novels or screenplays, had I a single creative bone in my body.