Managing or controlling diabetes is not something that can be done in an instant. Neither is it something that you can do once and it's done. Diabetes control is a constant, ongoing and lifetime occupation. The number one tool for controlling diabetes, then, is not your glucose meter but your time, and time management.



Of course there are the immediate and important tools such as your glucose monitor, diet, medications and exercise. But without integrating these tools into a system of time management, their help in controlling and minimizing the effects of diabetes will be far short of their potential.



Time is your best tool and your friend if you manage it well, but not if you waste it. People will say they are "just wasting time." The truth is, time is wasting them. They will not have that time back. They are getting older, meanwhile accomplishing little or nothing.



This is especially true for the diabetic. Think about where your present course of diabetes care will take you. Are you less likely or more likely to develop complications down the road if you continue as you are doing? If you are doing well and have good control and maintain it, that's terrific. You should have few or even no complications in the future.



But if not, come five, ten, twenty years from now, you may be risking diabetic neuropathy, damage to your liver and kidneys, blindness, sexual dysfunction, heart disease, and strokes. These terrible complications can be greatly lessened in the future if you put your number one tool to work today.



So how exactly do you use time management to control diabetes?



You set time-oriented goals and work at achieving them. For example, if like many Type 2 diabetics you are overweight or obese, you have weight to lose. Set a healthy weight as the goal. You are not going to reach your goal overnight but over the course of months, perhaps many months, depending on how much weight you have to lose.



The next step is to set a reasonable and specific date for completing your goal. You must set a time-frame, without which you do not have a goal at all. You will not achieve your goal "someday". Someday is like tomorrow in that it never comes.



Make the time-frame a part of the goal itself. In other words, your goal might be stated something like this: "I will lose forty pounds by August 3rd of this year."



Okay, now here's the secret that makes time work for you instead of against you. Years can be broken down into months, months into weeks, and weeks into days. You will break that time-frame down into smaller segments or sub-goals and accomplish them one at a time. You can set your sub-goals anywhere along the time-line. Just be sure that the sub-goals move toward achieving the main goal.



The long-range goal may seem difficult or even impossible, but you know you can and will achieve it by accomplishing sub-goals - daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly - until you reach your long-range goal. Success at last!



The same method can be used for blood-sugar control and lots of other areas of diabetes management. The main thing is to stop wasting time and put it to use...today!