Management by Objectives is a business concept made popular by Peter Drucker of Claremont Graduate University. It’s a fairly simple concept, but extremely important: if you don’t consistently measure the results of an activity or process, the activity or process will get out of hand and lead to poor results. Companies or businesses who create metrics for measuring such activities will find themselves more naturally improving those activities or processes and thus improving their results.

It’s not hard to see how management by objectives relates to type 1 diabetes management. In fact, that’s what effective diabetes management is all about – measurement and management. For the first four years of my life, post-diabetes, I did very little measurement and thus practiced very poor bg management. After diagnosis, I was told of the importance of measurement – it would help me achieve tighter blood sugar control which would prevent me from experiencing dangerous lows, would make me feel better, and help me live longer! For the first few months after diagnosis, I consistently measured my blood sugar and logged each test, but found that it made little difference – I was high a lot and would drop low very quickly. Whether I measured or not in the first few months, the results appeared to be the same. After some time, I began feeling that testing my blood sugar and entering each recording in a log was not fun, tedious, and to a teenager, a lot like homework.

During these years, I urinated quite frequently, felt tired often, and would experience daily lows that were scary, but I continued to believed that effective blood sugar control was an ideal that was nearly impossible to achieve.

Read the rest at diabeticlifebydesign.com