I’m on a 6:50AM flight to New York this morning. That entails a very early drive to the airport after kissing my three favorite people goodbye, and this morning I was thinking about the difficulty of balancing being a great husband, a great dad, and a great startup CEO.

Doing a startup is incredibly hard work. It takes a lot of hours. And when you’re not at your desk, your brain is usually still working. Pondering problems. Figuring out how to get around or over them. If you’re not careful, you can miss out on some wonderful moments of life.

I’m quite sure I don’t have this all figured out, but a big part of the solution for me has been redesigning my day around my family.

Most startup people that I know sleep in, start work around 9AM, and work until midnight or later. They also waste a lot of time being disorganized and working on the wrong things.

How do I know this? It used to be me.

So now, I start most days at 5:30AM, and try to step away at 6 or 6:30PM to spend a few hours with my wife and kids. Later that night, I might catch up on email, or prepare for the next day.

And I’ve also gotten very disciplined about being organized and making sure I’m working on the right things. I always know what my top priorities are, and what I need to do to push those forward.

I still find myself in “crunch time” once in a while, and have to stay up until 1AM to get something done. And I spend a good chunk of my Saturdays working, too. But if that’s the tradeoff I have to make in order to not work the 9AM to 2AM schedule and miss out on the lives of my three favorite people, I’ll take it.

If you’re balancing a family you love with a startup or an intense job, what are your secrets?