‘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 a reminder to stop ‘starting to start’ rather than just starting. 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 greeted the beginning.

Looking back from my point of view, 2016, to put it mildly, was not a great year. There were far too many losses of those near and dear, not to mention the passing of many iconic names.

But if there is one lesson I am trying to learn 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?

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… may I suggest that you stop ‘starting to start’ and just start?

In the spirit of practising what I preach, I’ve decided to stop planning how to make time for my prime vocation as a novelist, and to just start. After ten years of what feels like living, breathing and sleeping ReConnect Africa, I am handing over to my team for the next six months and taking a sabbatical from the magazine while I prioritise my writing career.

Over the next six months, we will be making a concerted effort to share the impressive library of articles and interviews we have built up over the past decade on ReConnect Africa. My team will continue to send out our monthly newsletters with up-to-date news and current events listings and highlight some of the fantastic material already on the site. In this way, new readers will be signposted to great articles and information while our longer-time subscribers will get a chance to revisit some of our most popular content.

So please continue to look out for our newsletters and to share them with your friends and contacts.

Finally, if you have also decided to stop ‘starting to start’ what matters to you and to just get on with it, I would love to hear from you!

Author of the novels ‘ From Pasta to Pigfoot’ and ‘From Pasta to Pigfoot: Second Helpings’ and the books 'I Want to Work in… Africa: How to Move Your Career to the World’s Most Exciting Continent’ and ‘Everyday Heroes – Learning from the Careers of Successful Black Professionals’.