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‘The horse-thief started by stealing a fowl.’

This Hausa saying illustrates progression; start small and with each accomplishment you can build your skills and enlarge your goals.

At this point, I hasten to add that this isn’t a call to encourage you into a life of spiralling criminality, but rather a reminder to stop ‘starting to start’ and just get on with it. If progress is what you are seeking, I can promise you that - without action - you can be assured of seeing the end of this year in much the same way as you are greeting its beginning.

2021 was, to put it mildly, not a great year. This seemingly never-ending pandemic had generated exhaustion, fear, anxiety, and mental ill-health. It has ended or severely compromised the lives of our nearest and dearest and left us in a state of constant uncertainty about the future.

We are not promised another year… so if there’s something you need to say, say it. If there’s something you want to do… stop ‘starting to start’ and just start.

But while there are things we can’t control – pandemics included – there are those things that lie within our control and as we start a new year, I invite you to focus on the latter. Because if there is one lesson I have learned from last year’s rollcall of disasters, it is that time is on no-one’s side.

We are not promised another year, or even another day, so if there’s something you need to say, say it. If there’s somewhere you need to be, then be there. If there’s something you want to do and that you have vague plans for starting at some undefined time in the future when it feels right, may I suggest that you stop ‘starting to start’ and just start?

Whether you choose to label the end of procrastination as a New Year’s resolution, or simply see it as the opportunity to finally get real, I will leave it for you to decide. All I will say is that instead of thinking about starting something, why not just begin?

Founder & Managing Editor, ReConnect Africa