David Trinko's been amazed to find what he can do by waking up at 5 a.m. each morning. (Photo courtesy of Jon Sullivan/Wikimedia Commons)

There never seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done. But the night? Those just seem to be wasted hours, lying around staring at the back of your eyelids.

Like so many people, I find the time it takes to do the things on my list is much more than the amount of time to do them. I’m at my office for about nine hours a day, and we spend about an hour commuting each day. I try to spend as much of my evenings as I can with my children, whether it’s playing with them or helping them trudge through homework.

Unfortunately, that meant a lot of things weren’t getting done that I wanted to get done. Whether it’s work that didn’t fit into the workday, things I’ve promised to do for community organizations or things I wanted to do for myself, they started piling up on me.

Then, last weekend, I realized something. I don’t necessarily need seven hours  of sleep each night. Most of my life, I’d gotten by with six, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d started sleeping that extra hour each night. So I started setting the alarm for 5 a.m. instead of 6 a.m. and heading down to my office area in our basement.

I need to be perfectly clear on this: I am not a morning person. I’m not terribly friendly in the mornings. I’m focused on whatever it is I’m trying to do in the morning, whether it’s shaving or filling out spreadsheets. In other words, it’s prime time to get things done.

It’s been a wonderfully successful week. Three of the days helped me clear off some ancient crumbs from my plate at work. One day, I finally delivered something to a community organization that should’ve been done a month ago. Another, I spent some quality time working on a pet project of my own.

Even right now, on a Saturday morning, I’m wiping things off my to-do list, all without interfering with the time I’d uusally spend with my family, who slumber blissfully unaware I’m getting stuff done.

Eventually, I want to return exercise to my daily routine. With this extra hour, anything seems possible.

I’d say it was the perfect plan with one exception: I managed to catch this nasty cold going around town. I’m not sure if I’d blame it on the hour less of sleep or if it’s inevitable you catch that sort of thing.

What do you do so you get everything done you want to accomplish?

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