Yosemite has ruined performance of my 3-year-old iMac with freezes, application shutdowns and more. What can I do?

Question

Since installing Yosemite my iMac frequently freezes, particularly when I have multiple windows open/apps running. I've never had this problem before. All my apps are installed on a solid-state drive and all documents, etc. on a separate drive, so I'm accustomed to fast performance. Most problems seem to occur with Microsoft Office (Word and Entourage) and Safari, but that's what I use most heavily, so no surprise. I have always been able to keep a lot of apps/windows open on desktop without performance problems, until now. Yosemite is leaving me stranded. (I upgraded to Yosemite because a couple of the newest apps I use on my two Macs and iPhone require Yosemite.) Any advice?

Answer 1

When you have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.  
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.
Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.
Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.