How I transformed my dreadful life into a cheerful one

Life is a race, in which we all are sprinting to reach to a certain point. And, amidst the haphazardness of work, somehow we tend to forget about our personal life. Being a manager I’ve seen it all. I didn’t even know when my son was all grown up and went to college. I missed all the small things that makes life large.

Simply because I could not draw the line between my professional and personal life. While my son was being raised, I was busy raising money for my company. When I should have been out there watching our son’s first performance in the school play, I was busy watching a team presentation. When I should have been there helping my kid learning football, I was busy helping my team members learn how to handle client issues.

And, that would have been the case if I had not found ProofHub - the task management tool that transformed my life. It helped me shape my life from being all office and no personal time to striking the perfect balance between the two. And, now I can proudly say that I can spare time for my family, my kids and my personal interests rather than always being tangled in the work web.

Here’s how the project management tool helped me to -

• Reach home on time

By adopting a project management tool to manage projects, one of the first changes that I was observe in my life was - to go home on time! No longer did I have to wait for late hours to get the tasks accomplished. I could save all the time, which was earlier spent on drafting emails and sending them to each team member. And, after sending bringing the team together for a quick meeting to discuss scope of the project, which used to go on for hours.

Thanks to this software I could assign tasks to individuals with ease, create milestones so that everyone maintains a steady pace and no delays are caused. I could even keep an eye on who was spending how many hours on which task thanks to the timesheets, and get to know in case things were slipping out of hands with the help of Gantt charts.

I did not need to put laborious efforts to sort things out.

“Unable to meet the project deadline? Try ProofHub and see how it helps you to get your tasks completed on time.”

Within a matter of weeks, everything was streamlined. The team got into the knack of using the tool and things started to fit into their places. Tasks and projects started getting completed on time, and the entire team as well as me could leave for home on time.

• Spend time with my kids

Prior to using ProofHub for task and project management, I was always on phone even after coming late from office. I used to reach home at a time when my son was deep asleep. And, even during morning time all I did while being at home was to remain glued to my phone or laptop. There was no time to talk to my kid. I can’t even remember when did I see my son’s face for more than once or twice a week during that phase.

This whole team-handling, managing projects, meetings and constant pressure to finish things on time was sucking everything out of my life.

And, I could not help but continue to stress myself doing all this. After all, I did not have the option to quit; I had to raise my family.

But everything changed when we started to use a project management tool to manage our office activities. Processes became streamlined, even while working with a couple of remote team members, I did not have to worry about managing their work and shooting them emails in the middle of the night. I was doing all that with a project management software. What this meant was I could give more time to my family and kids, which was the best thing to have happened in my life since I started my journey as a manager.

• Enjoy weekends with my friends and family

A big part of my job was to have meetings with clients, which more often than used to fall on weekends. So there was no scope of spending quality time with my family. In fact, prior to bringing the team on board to a project management tool I didn’t even take a holiday for almost one full year. The irony was that even if I took a day off ever, I was always managing teams and tasks on my phone.

This was taking a heavy toll on my personal life. My family life was all messed up. My health was constantly deteriorating, and I had nothing else left in my life beside work.

But, today I’m stress free. All thanks to the project management tool that we use to run our daily errands at work.

It helps me to manage my teams, keep an eye on who’s doing what and how many hours are being spent at work. I don’t need to bring the team together for meetings, which used to be a sheer waste of time. Online discussions have taken their place, so we save quite a lot of time.

Plus, the feature of setting estimated time to complete a task has increased a sense of accountability in the team, and lessened the scope of blame games. Overall, work is getting completed on time, team is happy, management is happy, which ultimately means I can now have my share of time on weekends with my friends and family members.

• Avoid burnouts

Burnouts have become fairly common amongst employees. With the amount of stress and pressure each individual has to go through in office life daily, the matters are going from bad to worse with every passing day. And, my case was no different. Burnouts had become part and parcel of my professional life. But, at the same I was not even getting the time required to take a day off completely from work.

These burnouts were the major reason I’d acquired heart disease, increased blood pressure and mild obesity. Not to forget the irritable nature, which was bestowed upon me as a gift for being a manager. From burnouts to irritability, everything was just deteriorating the quality of my life.

But that’s where a project management software came across as the beacon of hope. And, it did wonders. Once the entire team was onboard things started to streamline. Tasks started to get completed on time, and projects started to get delivered within deadlines. Stress became less and productivity became more. Ultimately, in not more than a couple of months I got rid of the problem of serious burnouts that I was facing.

• Sleep better

According to Anxiety and Depressions Association of America, seventy percent of the individuals experience stress and anxiety on a daily basis. And, seventy percent of these individuals have trouble sleeping normally. Without even realizing the toll that heavy office stress was taking on me, I had become one of these people. I could not sleep for more than 3-4 hours.

Late night work, getting up early in the morning. Office calls. All these had become staple for me. My life had gone on from being the perfect dream that I had imagined during my college days to becoming a nightmare. Happiness was sucked up, and I was in desperate need of something that could turn it around completely. And, that something came in the form of a project management tool.

Anyone reading this post for the first time might think I’ve exaggerated a few things. But, trust me if you’ve been a manager, then I’m sure you will relate to every word I’ve written here.

And, if you are still stuck in the rut of traditional project management, doing things with a pen and a paper, then it is time for you to come out of it and move towards the new way. Employ a project management tool;it will transform the grinning faces in your team into smiling ones. And, you will have a better life both during work and afterwards.

If you liked reading this post, you will love this one as well -