Greetings, I am currently unsure of how to do particular things that relate to organising/planning my software projects. It seems that whenever I plan out to write software, I always get distracted by little things that occur around me, mainly the internet, such as YouTube, Facebook and so on. I feel that I am not prepared enough to tackle my programming projects that I wish to implement, my ideas just keep stacking, I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the things that I wish to do. I'm not a noob to programming, I have been programming for quite some time now, but I really feel like I'm going no where. I feel as if I was more organised/planned and concentrated on my project I would be doing something effective. I don't really wish to pay for any software that will help me organise a project; I'm cheap.

My question is simple, how can I properly organise and manage my programming projects? I have tried using UML, but frankly there is not a good range of free UML programs that are fast to work with, should I even bother with UML and if so, which UML application should I use?

Are there any free applications to "visually" see what a program's GUI (or content, for a game or something) will look like, so I know what I'm actually aiming to do.

Perhaps I'm being a little to abstract. What I really want to know is... how do people, as in people in software development teams (profesional ones) plan out their projects? What steps of organisation do they take? How do they manage their time? Etc.

For example, do they first organise their project by writing out what they wish the program to achieve and who they wish to aim their program to? If so, do they write this in a simple text file, or by hand, or... something else? Do they graphically see their progress as they are achieving their goals, as in graphs or a big TODO list made in Excel or something along those lines?

Any details such as links or a good explanation on how this is done would be really appreciated. I'm not the most organised person, but I really want to become one. I believe it will really help me, compared to just blindly coding and then realising that I could've designed it better and having to rewrite thousands of lines of code over again... Or just sitting there thinking what should I be doing right now

Thanks.


P.S.
I am sorry if there is already a thread about this, I did do a search and I didn't find any results.

Greetings, I am currently unsure of how to do particular things that relate to organising/planning my software projects. It seems that whenever I plan out to write software, I always get distracted by little things that occur around me, mainly the internet, such as YouTube, Facebook and so on. I feel that I am not prepared enough to tackle my programming projects that I wish to implement, my ideas just keep stacking, I feel a bit overwhelmed with all the things that I wish to do. I'm not a noob to programming, I have been programming for quite some time now, but I really feel like I'm going no where. I feel as if I was more organised/planned and concentrated on my project I would be doing something effective. I don't really wish to pay for any software that will help me organise a project; I'm cheap.

My question is simple, how can I properly organise and manage my programming projects? I have tried using UML, but frankly there is not a good range of free UML programs that are fast to work with, should I even bother with UML and if so, which UML application should I use?

Are there any free applications to "visually" see what a program's GUI (or content, for a game or something) will look like, so I know what I'm actually aiming to do.

Perhaps I'm being a little to abstract. What I really want to know is... how do people, as in people in software development teams (profesional ones) plan out their projects? What steps of organisation do they take? How do they manage their time? Etc.

For example, do they first organise their project by writing out what they wish the program to achieve and who they wish to aim their program to? If so, do they write this in a simple text file, or by hand, or... something else? Do they graphically see their progress as they are achieving their goals, as in graphs or a big TODO list made in Excel or something along those lines?

Any details such as links or a good explanation on how this is done would be really appreciated. I'm not the most organised person, but I really want to become one. I believe it will really help me, compared to just blindly coding and then realising that I could've designed it better and having to rewrite thousands of lines of code over again... Or just sitting there thinking what should I be doing right now

Thanks.


P.S.
I am sorry if there is a thread about what I am about to say, I couldn't find any.