Things are busy around here this time of year. That's not a complaint, just a statement of fact.

Weekends are tough - my wife usually has a couple of tutoring sessions scheduled during the day, meaning my day is dominated by my daughters.

So come report-writing season, it's a tough juggling act for me.

On top of that, when I have to dig out from more than two feet of snow, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

So I created some more.

Here's what happened: Saturday I got very little report writing done...but I did do a lot of shoveling. I didn't nap....I was tired.

So I decided to go to bed very early Saturday night (lights were out for me by 8:30) and wake up all the earlier on Sunday morning. (I've planned this before, but never followed through. So following through on it is why it's a 'New Thing'.)

I set the alarm for 4:30, thinking I'd probably snooze it a couple of times. I hit snooze once, but didn't even need it - I was up for good within five minutes.

I have to tell you - it was great.

I got some reports written, took a shower at around my normal weekday time, and was able to make the Sunday Dunkin' run and have breakfast on the table for all my ladies before they were out of bed.

By 10am I was able to dig out our second car and I felt like I had already put in a day's work with plenty of hours to go in the day. I didn't even nap on Sunday, and only felt tired a couple of times. (But here it is Tuesday when this posts, and Monday night was kind of rough. We'll have to see how long into the week this carries over.)

Overall, it went so well the thought occurred to me I could make this a regular occurrence.

I'm sure eventually the early hours would catch up to me, and I'm sure I'd stop thinking it was such a great idea when baseball games started up at night, but it's a pretty good lifestyle. And I'll tell you what: it is peaceful outside at 4:30 in the morning.

I also noticed, shortly after waking up, that there were already tweets from the likes of Peter Gammons and Buster Olney. Gammons is probably up at 4:30am because he's of that age where people tend to do that sort of thing...but Olney strikes me as someone who subscribes to the 'create more hours in the day' theory.

It's a disciplined lifestyle. I don't know if, for someone who really needs a lot of sleep in order to function, I can keep it up. (A good breakfast earlier than Sunday, when I waited to get the Dunkin', and some nutritious snacks during the day would help.) But it may be worth trying if I'm out to get things accomplished without sacrificing time with my girls.