I'm going to put a picture on the screen. There it is. know who this is? Take a look at him. Is he familiar? Do you recognize him?

If you don't, don't worry, the picture was taken quite a long time ago. It's me. It's me on the boundary between being a teenager and an adult. When I was around 1819, I traveled around India. I took four months off after school, traveled around India, and came back with a beard. And for the next seven years of my life, I kept the beard I was a student for seven years, which is a long time.

And any man watching this probably know that shaving doesn't take a lot of time. It takes about five minutes a day, no big deal. Till you start doing some maths and multiplying it up, because five minutes a day, over the course of a week is give or take half an hour. And there are 52 weeks in a year. So over the course of a year, those half hours add up to pretty much 24 hours. Yes, men, you spend about 24 hours a year shaving if you're clean shaven.

So over the course of those seven years, I saved myself seven whole days, not seven working days, but 724 hour days. If your average working day is eight hours and I save myself So 21 working days, that's four working weeks and a bit of change. And that's great news. Because, like many of you watching this, things happen in my life. And there was a time when something happened, which was unexpected, unwanted, an inconvenient, and it meant that I had to take time off from the work that I was doing to focus on. Okay, I did that.

But when I came back to my work, I was about three or four weeks late. What was I can do? Well, the answer was easy. When I was a student, I spent seven years not shaving. So I'd save myself somewhere, like four working weeks. So I went to the cupboard and look for it, and it wasn't.

Of course, this story highlights the fundamental nature of time. You can't say time it is not possible. In my project management courses, I tell my students that time is not a resource, because you can't hoard it, you can't transfer it. It just comes and goes. And those seven years I spent as a student, I was studying physics. So I know something else about time.

What I know about time is that nobody really understands it. You can't save time. We don't understand it. So of course, the reality is that the name of this course is rubbish. You can't manage time. All you can do is to use the time that you have.

Well, and that's the core of what this video program is all about. Using your time well. So with this little introduction over in the next video, I'm going to show you The fundamental principle I use to use my time Well, I often getting asked do I use the hints and tips and ideas in my time management books in my time management training in my time management seminars? And my simple answer is, Yes, I do. And the one that I use time and time again constantly to manage the way that I use my time in my life is this fundamental principle, the oats principle that you'll see in the next video.