I remember the day clearly, 4th of February 2008, my student visa finally came out after a long wait of over two months. A few hours after collecting the visa I was on a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. My first time outside of Zimbabwe. I was already late for university orientation week so I had to move quickly. My mother cried at the airport as the whole family said goodbye. Just like that my journey into adulting started.

Before we get further into that story let us start back at the beginning.

I was born at Mater Dei hospital in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe on the 28 of March 1989. An introvert by nature, I grew up very shy and quiet. My school teachers always gave feedback to my parents that I needed to speak more in class. To this day I still find myself on the quieter side. I prefer to listen and only speak when I have something of value to add to a conversation.

My parents worked hard for our family to have a good life. They both come from humble backgrounds. Through the foundation they set for me I have had opportunities and experiences they never had when they were younger. They both never went to university as an example.

My mom was born in Mbare, a high density suburb (township) in the main capital Harare and grew up there. She had to drop out of school after her Ordinary Levels at the age of 17 due to economic issues at home. Fortunately she managed to secure a job at a bank immediately after as she was intelligent, diligent and as a result was doing academically well in school. I believe I get most of my logical reasoning from her.

My dad was born in Gutu, a rural district in Masvingo Province, southern Zimbabwe. At the young age of 20 he joined the army so he could help fight in the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe’s independence. I believe I get most of my discipline and ambition from him.

A shared lesson I have learnt from both my parents is to work hard and trust that with time it will always pay off. Despite their humble backgrounds, my parents have always been hard working. You don’t just wake up and find yourself further up the social class hierarchy.

They paid for our education from nursery school up to university. They paid for our university fees while Zimbabwe’s economy was crashing, that was tough. They took us on holidays across Zimbabwe when we were young. They ran a lot of different side businesses while they kept their full time jobs.

From the top of my head I can remember my parents running small grocery shops, bottle (liquor) stores, they had a freezit making machine and supplied wholesale stores, they had a mealie meal grinding machine and supplied wholesale stores and they also ran a gift shop when we lived in Marondera, Zimbabwe. I’m sure there are a few more I have not mentioned here. Eventually they went into business full time running a small bed and breakfast lodge off one of Zimbabwe’s national highways.

As a side-effect I was exposed to entrepreneurship from a very young age by watching and being involved in the side businesses my parents were running. As an example, when my parents had the freezit making machine I used to collect a carton of freezits after school and I would sit outside our front gate with a cooler box and sell freezits to people walking past. I would get to keep the earnings and that was my motivation. I was only 9 – 10 years old at that time but I was learning the fundamentals of entrepreneurship.

It is not surprising that in my 20s I went on to do the same and try start my own side businesses while I kept my full time job. In my early 20s I started an educational technology project with friends, there were many useful lessons I learnt there that still apply today. I also started a lifestyle brand, it grew and I sold some merchandise. With another friend at some point we bought cars and put them on the Uber platform and hired drivers, we had 3 cars before we eventually left that business. I also just remembered that while I was a student at the University of Cape Town I ran our Kopano residence’s tuck-shop along with four other friends.

Now its gone full circle and I am a partner at our family owned African Cuisine restaurant along with my parents. 

Always keep learning, looking out for opportunities and never limit yourself to doing one thing.

So now back to that flight I made to Johannesburg, South Africa in February 2008. My older sister met me at OR Tambo International airport on arrival and later I proceeded to connect to Cape Town so I could go start my student life at the University of Cape Town.

I did not know any other 1st year students at the university when I arrived. I had one other friend from my high school who was also coming to the University of Cape Town that year but his student visa was delayed so he was still stuck in Zimbabwe. Fortunately for me I had been in boarding school through my studies in high school. That taught me a lot about independence, responsibility and discipline.

From the time I started studying for my Computer Science degree at the University of Cape Town I knew how big an opportunity it was for me to be there. My parents had worked hard to get me there during the tough economic conditions in Zimbabwe. I had to make sure I succeeded. I did not have many other options.

I had fun in university, built many solid friendships, but I also knew the importance of why I was there so I ensured my academics were always in order. I never failed any exam I wrote. I was on the Dean’s Merit List for every year I was at the university.

When I graduated in 2010 it made my parents really proud. What made them much happier was the day I secured my first job at Allan Gray as a foreigner in South Africa after graduating. I remember the day I got the job, the phone call back home telling my parents I had signed the contract. I definitely also remember the party after that celebrating with my university friends, good times!

When I was much younger I realised if I worked harder than most people and put extra effort in everything I do, I would give myself a better chance at succeeding at most things. This has been a mantra I have carried most of my life.

Remember I said that it was my first time out of Zimbabwe when I flew into South Africa for university. Over my 20s, since I started working, I have managed to travel to other countries – England, Wales, Australia, Spain, Zambia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, and Tanzania. Some of these have been holidays and some work opportunities. What I am certain of is all this has been possible through embracing opportunities, working hard and trusting the results will pay off over time.

The reason I have got as far as I have is through the opportunities my parents opened up for me. I sometimes think of other people with potential who remain stuck because they never have the same opportunities as us. Maybe one day I will be able to contribute to increasing opportunity for others. This is a good goal for the next decade I am entering and it aligns well with my life mission statement.

I mentioned a lot about lessons I’ve learnt from my parents earlier. Probably the most important lesson I learnt from them is to have fun and be happy in life. Optimising for happiness is important. Do things that make you happy. Have a positive mindset. Spend time with people that you are happy to be around. I believe starting from a happy place is the root of most success. I have been privileged to have some of the best friendships as I have gone through this journey of life.

There have been some great times in my journey so far, there have also been some challenging times. All these experiences have built me up into who I am today. I am thirty years old today. I am looking forward to the next decade and to continue inspiring people to be better versions of themselves. This is just the beginning!

Writing this has in many ways felt like writing a tribute to my parents. I know they are proud of how far I have come and I hope to continue making them proud.

Now let me go and enjoy some 30th birthday wine.

The General (28 March 2019)

On Friday 8th of February 2019 I delivered a talk at the RubyFuza Conference in Cape Town. Rubyfuza is the longest run Ruby conference in South Africa. The conference is mostly attended by software engineers. My talk was about “Onboarding for software engineers”. I have decided to write up the content I shared into an article. I am hoping it can be shared wider and people who did not attend the conference can also gain some value from it. Enjoy!

A bit of background about myself: I have been working in the software industry for just over 8 years and in that time I have worked for 2 companies. Post  university I started working at Allan Gray which is an investment management company. At Allan Gray I worked as a software engineer in their web team using C# and ASP.NET technologies. After 4 years at Allan Gray I decided to move on, and so I discovered Prodigy Finance where I have been working for just over 4 years now. Prodigy Finance provides borderless postgraduate student loans to international students to study at leading universities. My current role at Prodigy Finance is Development Line Manager in the technology team. My role is split between operating as a software engineer in a team and managing 5 other software engineers who report into me, while I help them grow in their careers, set goals and ensure they have what they need to succeed at the company.

There has probably never been a better time to be a software engineer than right now. Most businesses and organisations across the world make use of technology for their day to day operations. For some of these companies their whole product / business is technology. Added to this is the fact that technology keeps advancing (new technologies and frameworks get released often). Businesses need to keep their technology up to date to remain relevant. Every person with internet access (which eventually will be the whole world) uses lots of apps and websites every day. All this has resulted in a massive demand for people with the skills to build software – the software engineers.

The demand and supply curve for software engineers is not balancing. As it stands demand is much higher than supply. A truly valuable developer is one of the hardest things to find for companies. If you are involved in recruitment you’ll know what I am talking about, the competition is fierce and candidates are constantly being baited from one company to another with promises of free gadgets, gym memberships, equity, remote contract work with 3 months off every year, along with some of the best salaries in the world.

Companies spend a lot of time in the hiring efforts for software engineers. If we step back and consider the reason you want to hire a software engineer at your company – ideally once you hire the person you want them to provide value at your company. You want a new software engineer to be productive as soon as possible and to be productive for the long term.

There’s nothing worse than feeling you are wasting your time. Imagine putting all your time, energy, and resources into hiring someone and then they never become productive or worse they quit within a few months. The cost of replacing a recently hired employee is 30-50% of their salary. Companies lose 25% of their employees in the first year, and all too often due to faulty employee onboarding processes. It is a waste of time, money and it is bad for your company’s reputation if an employee leaves early on. Skilled software engineers are so high in demand that they can afford the luxury of switching jobs as often as they like, which takes the importance of onboarding and retention to a whole new level.

When I looked at what would make great onboarding for software engineers I thought about what traits I believe make a good all-round software engineer. I then thought about how I could help someone develop those traits. I came up with 3 key areas to focus on once a new software engineer joins a company:

1. Tools / Technologies
2. Domain Knowledge
3. Soft Skills

I will drill down into each of these 3 areas, explain what they are and how to provide the ideal training / environment for your new software engineer to succeed in them.

Tools / Technologies

When looking at tools / technologies I am referring to the following:

1. What programming languages do you use at your company? Examples could be Ruby, C# or Python and many more.
2. What frameworks do you use at your company? Examples could be Ruby on Rails, Django or ASP.NET and many more.
3. How is the architecture of your systems structured? Do you have one monolith application or is your system split into multiple services. If your system is split into multiple services how do they communicate with each other?
4. What source control tool do you use and what are your workflows when using that tool?
5. How is your infrastructure set up? Where is your code hosted? Is this all done in an automated way or is it manual?
6. What build and continuous integration tools do you use? Where does code go to once a developer pushes it up? What runs the unit and integration tests? How does the code eventually get to production?
7. What coding standards and preferred practices do you have in place at your company? A software engineer may join your company having used similar technologies at a previous company but they will still need to understand your coding standards and preferred practices within those technologies.

So what are some of the things you can do to ensure a new software engineer gets up to speed with the things listed above?

Make real changes to the codebase

In the early days of a software engineer joining your company give them a chance to make a real change to the codebase that gets pushed to production. Even if the change is really small such as a text change to the view it will still be valuable. Making any change to the production codebase means the new software engineer has to checkout the codebase (exposing them to the source control tools), make the change and run the tests (exposing them to the structure of the codebase and how to run the tests), push up the code and run the tests on a build server (exposing them to the build and continuous integration tools) and finally deploy the change to production (exposing them to how changes get shipped to production). Any small change to the codebase allows a new software engineer to understand the full workflow of how something comes from being a requirement to being live on production. So give your new software engineer a chance to make a production change as early as possible.

Pair Programming

In the early days of a software engineer joining your company they should pair program on most tasks with a software engineer who has been at the company for much longer. Pair programming will allow the new software engineer to learn about your company’s systems as they will have someone experienced to answer any questions they have and show them how things work. Pair programming will also allow the new software engineer to build confidence as they will get a sense of involvement in the tasks they will be working on. Ideally you want the new software engineer to pair program with different team members so they get to know all their colleagues and also learn from a diverse set of people. The key learning here is do not isolate a new software engineer and leave them to solve problems by themselves as it can be frustrating.

Onboarding documentation

If your company has any onboarding documentation that could be useful to a new starter you want to share that documentation with them in the early days. It may be documentation that was specifically prepared to help new starters get up to speed, or it can be general documentation that is also useful to existing team members (such as current architecture diagrams). The important thing here is that any useful documentation is shared early on after someone has joined so they can consume it when they are eager to learn and get up to speed. An important thing to remember about any documentation is that it must be kept up to date else it may give outdated information. If your new software engineers identify any missing or outdated information in your documentation use it as an opportunity to update the documentation before the next person starts.

Learning resources list / Training Budget

A new software engineer may join your company having used different tools / technologies at their previous companies. You will need to help them with extra learning material for them to get up to speed with your tools / technologies. Your company should keep a list of known good learning resources a new software engineer can use to get up speed with your company’s tools / technologies. These learning resources could be a list of books to read, or online tutorials to take on. People have different preferred learning styles so find out from your new software engineer how they prefer to learn and point them towards the correct resources. Ideally your company has a training budget for its employees and allows the software engineer to spend some of that training budget to buy the books or online tutorials. Invest in training your employees and it will pay off when they become productive. An example of this in practice is when a new software engineer joins our company and has no Ruby or Ruby on Rails experience if they prefer books I normally recommend the Programming Ruby (commonly known as The PickAxe) book and the Agile Web Development with Rails book. If they prefer online video tutorials there are tools such as Pluralsite and LinkedIn Learning that also have good resources.

Domain Knowledge

If you successfully onboard a new software engineer on the tools / technologies you will have an engineer who is confident they understand all your technologies and can write code using the programming languages at your company. However software engineering is not just about writing code, it is more involved than that. The code that a software engineer writes must align with a problem their company is trying to solve and actually solve that problem once it is deployed to production. So every software engineer needs to have a good understanding of the business domain they are working in. When a new software engineer joins your company you need to educate them on what your company does, why your company exists, and what your company goals are.

Induction training

Educating your new software engineer about the business should happen through some sort of business induction training. How this will happen in practice will differ with each company depending on company size, complexity of the business domain and which people in your company hold most of the knowledge. In some companies it may be enough for the new software engineer to go through the business domain with another more experience engineer who understands it well or the team product owner who may have more knowledge about how the business operates. In slightly bigger companies you can have more formalised induction training in place where each company department hosts a session and explains how they work and what their purpose is. The goal here is to ensure your new software engineer has a full understanding of the business as this will help them build the correct software, possibly suggest ideas that will help the business grow, or question requirements when they are asked to build features. You can only do all these things if you have a good understanding of the business.

Soft Skills

If you have successfully onboarded a software engineer on tools / technologies and domain knowledge you are almost done. You will be left with one more area. In a majority of companies these days people work in teams not in isolation. When a new software engineer joins your company they are likely to be placed in a team where they will be working with other engineers, quality assurance engineers, a product owner, and perhaps a scrum master if you are applying Scrum. Further to that your new software engineer is definitely going to interact with other employees from other company departments or the direct users of the software they build. This means every engineer needs to communicate and interact with other humans as they get their work done. This communication and interaction with other people is normally classified as soft skills. The last pillar of onboarding a new software engineer properly is to ensure you help them with their soft skills. This is usually the area most neglected by people in the software industry but arguably it is the most important. So how do you do help a new software engineer develop their soft skills?

Let them lead team reviews / company wide demos

Once a new software engineer has settled down at your company give them the opportunity to present the work they have been doing to other people. This can happen in the regular team review sessions or a company wide demo of the work their team has been doing. Allowing someone to present their work gives them the opportunity to grow their presentation skills and communication skills. A key skill every software engineer should master is being able to explain a feature they have built to a non-technical person without including any technical jargon in the explanation. Allowing someone to present their work also gives them the opportunity to show they understand the business and why they built the work they are presenting. Finally giving someone an opportunity to present to a wider business audience gives them visibility across the company, people will now know who they are and they can approach them later to chat about the work they presented.

Team building

To help a new software engineer settle into your company and build relationships with their new colleagues you must organise some team building activities. Arrange activities that take the team outside of the normal day to day work grind. The idea here is that people get to know each other outside of just solving work problems all the time. Your team can unplug, relax and chat about their lives and general interests outside of work. The actual team building activity is up to you and your team. It could be just post work social dinner / drinks, a braai or an actual booked fun activity such as go-karting. Whatever activity you choose the idea is to allow people some time off work to get to know each other and build relationships, this will likely translate to them working better together. For a new software engineer it allows them to get to know their new team members.

Pair programming

I’ve mentioned pair programming again here even though I listed it earlier in the tools / technologies section. I believe pair programming also helps one grow their soft skills as by its nature pair programming involves communicating and interacting with another software engineer. Coming up with a solution to a problem together and aligning with another engineer despite differing starting opinions helps cultivate good team relationships.

Workplace culture

Every company has a workplace culture they try to live by. I have listed this here as it is important for new software engineers to have good examples of how to act / behave according to your culture. In the early days a new software engineer will be watching and learning from existing employees. How you behave as existing employees influences a new software engineer’s future behavior. So all existing employees must be great examples of the culture you have set for your company.

At this point you will have successfully onboarded a new software engineer with tools / technologies, domain knowledge and soft skills. You have given them a big chance to bring value to your company and be productive as soon as possible and for the long term.

In summary the goal is for your new software engineer to write code, learn about the company, and get to know their colleagues.

I joined Prodigy Finance at the beginning of 2015. At the time there were just 4 other software engineers in the team. Now the engineering team size is approaching 50. The principles and practices I have shared above are things we have tried and tested as we have grown the team and I have seen them work for us. I’m hoping they can add value to your onboarding process.

Extra things to note:

• Senior engineers need to be onboarded too. Onboarding well does not only apply to junior engineers.
• The average employee takes upwards of six months to become fully competent in their role. Don’t overwhelm people. Check in early and often. Set the right expectations when someone new starts at your company.
• Every person has their own learning styles so onboarding practices will be slightly different for each individual but the principles will remain the same.

On Sunday 10th of June 2018 I completed my first ever Comrades Marathon. In a time of 9 hours 33 minutes. There is no better feeling than crossing that finish line.  Six months of training had come to fruition. Amongst runners, the Comrades Marathon is one of the pinnacle races. It is the world’s largest and oldest ultra marathon race. If you are a runner in South Africa, someone has asked you before, “when are you doing the Comrades Marathon?” or the thought has crossed your mind. There is a reason they call it the ultimate human race.

This year’s race was 90.184 kilometres long. 21273 crazy people were registered for the race including me. This year was the down run from Pietermaritzburg to Durban. This year’s theme for the race was Asijiki (No Turning Back).

I started training seriously for the race at the beginning of January. I shared all my training runs on my Instagram profile and Strava profile from January – June. I wanted anyone else who would like to tackle the Comrades in the future to see what the training journey looks like, as opposed to seeing one isolated event in which I would take on 90 kilometres.

Along my six months training journey, there were many lessons I learnt. Lessons about myself, about endurance, about the limits /capacity of human performance and many more. The purpose of this post is to share these lessons. Most of the lessons I found can be applied in many areas of life outside of running. I hope you can find something useful here. So here we go:

Scale up

To train for the Comrades Marathon I had to increase my running mileage. Most weeks between January and June my training routine consisted of three short (12km – 20km) mid-week runs and two long (25km – 35km) weekend runs. A snapshot of my yearly mileage a few days before the Comrades Marathon, shows how much I scaled up my running in 2018 as part of the preparation for the race.

A snapshot of just my 2018 running mileage a few days before the race shows I had completed 69 runs, covering about 1242 kilometres and spending almost 105 hours out there on training runs.

If you told me last year that in 2018 I would scale up my running this much I would have thought you were crazy. However over this training journey I learnt that we can probably scale up a lot more things in our lives. All we need is dedication and focus. I am keen to see what else in my life I can scale up if I give it similar focus and time I gave to the Comrades Marathon training.

Mornings are beautiful

I did most of my training runs on early mornings in Cape Town. I started most of my runs between 5:30am – 6am. Morning runs are special. They are quiet and peaceful. If you time them correctly the sun rises while you are on the run and it is always a beautiful sight. I made an effort to capture images of Cape Town as I was on these morning runs. Below are some of my favourite images captured over the six months of training.

Even if you are not training for a big race, ocassionally go out early in the mornings and experience the peace and beauty you normally miss out on.

Discipline

The discipline to wake up early in the morning (5:30am – 6am) on training days. There were many mornings when my alarm went off and I did not feel like going for a training run, but I built up the discipline to still go out on those mornings. Those mornings usually turned out to be the best training runs, I always appreciated it more after the run. Discipline was key, I needed to get the mileage on the legs in training else I was going to struggle on race day. In the same way if you are working towards any big goal, you are going to need discipline as there will be days when you won’t feel like showing up but you must.

Patience: To go faster you have to go slower

If you are used to running much shorter distances, one of the first things you learn when training for the Comrades Marathon is that you need to learn how to run much slower. Over 90 kilometres your race pace will be much slower than usual shorter races. So in training I started running much slower to get as close to my ideal race pace for the 10th of June as possible.

I had to learn how to be patient. Its strange, but it is not easy for a runner to adjust their pace and go much slower. It actually takes conscious effort to avoid getting into your normal groove and just go at a pace that is too fast. An interesting side effect took place after a couple of months – the more I trained running at a slower pace, the faster I became at the shorter distances. While I trained for the Comrades I managed to set a new personal best time for my 10 kilometre races and also set a new marathon (42 kilometres) personal best time which was 20 minutes faster than my previous one.

It turns out approaching things with patience at a much slower pace can allow you to be much faster over time. Running has taught me that sometimes in life if you want to go faster you must learn to go slower for longer first.

Self drive

I did most of my training runs solo. A lot of people train for the Comrades Marathon with their running club members or with friends. I mostly trained alone. Of the 69 training runs I did from early January, I must have only done about 5 runs with other people.

I definitely believe training with others can help make people more accountable, so I’m not saying its not valuable at all. In my situation I just ended up doing most of my runs solo and just stuck with it. Over time I realised training solo was going to help me on race day as over 90 kilometres there were bound to be phases when I would be running alone and requiring some self motivation.

I believe it is beneficial to have people surrounding you when working towards a big goal, but this should never be barrier to you going for things by yourself if you have enough self drive!

Research

As I trained for the race I grew more and more interested in running. I wanted to know what makes people do well at ultra endurance events. So aside from the usual reading of articles on the internet I started to read some running books. I found some of them inspirational, and some of them more informative. I learnt about what happens internally in the body over a long ultra distance endurance event. I learnt about how much of a role the mind plays in doing well in a long ultra distance endurance event. I learnt about how some tribes that run for fun have become great endurance runners as side-effect of the fun they are having. I read three books below on the topic of running. I highly recommend all three to any runners out there.

What I talk about when I talk about running – (Haruki Murakami).

Born to run – (Christopher McDougall).

Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance – (Alex Hutchison).

If you are working towards a big goal, doing some research in the area that represents your goal will help. That research can come in any form, books, videos, podcasts and many more mediums. The key is to learn more about the area, to help you understand it further and perhaps increase your interest / passion for the field.

Community

There is an incredible community surrounding the Comrades Marathon. At some point along my training journey I found out about the Comrades Marathon Facebook group, which I proceeded to join. I was mostly an observer in the group reading other people’s posts. I learnt so much about the ultimate human race from this group: training advice, race day advice, inspirational stories from people who have done the race in the past, and so much more.

The official Comrades Marathons coach Lindsey Parry also has his own website https://coachparry.com/ which contains content to help all runners. I actually used Coach Parry’s Comrades Marathon training programme over six months. I adapted it slightly to suit how I preferred to train. Coach Parry also had a community around him and he held monthly webinars to help people prepare for the race. I joined three of these webinars in the months approaching the race.

Finally the legendary Bruce Fordyce (nine time Comradas Marathon winner) has his own website http://www.brucefordyce.com/ which has a blog section for his articles. I found valuable posts that he wrote as the race day approached.

Whatever big goal you are trying to achieve, look around for the communities surrounding the area, they can help with your learning and growth. Also identify the successful people in that area, follow them, and use whatever knowledge you can gain from them. They have been there before you. Someone once said – we are all standing on the shoulders of giants.

Showing up (race day lessons)

You can do all the training for an event but you still need to show up and perform on race day. I woke up to get ready at 3:45am on race day. To be honest I hardly slept the night before. I usually sleep ok the night before big events, but my mind kept playing different scenarios up there. Despite the lack of sleep, I felt good after my early breakfast of oats with peanut butter and a banana. My girlfriend dropped me off at the start at 4:45am, then I proceeded to find my B seed pen.

As the race start time approached we sang the South African national anthem, Shosholoza, and Chariots of Fire. Everyone gets fired up after that, runners hug, high-five each other, and some even cry. It was special, the moment you realise all the training you have put in is about to come together. Shortly after the songs, the race began.

The first 70 kilometres went quite smoothly for me. I embraced it and enjoyed it. It was fun, the support along the whole route was amazing and we had such great weather for a long day of running. I ran at my target pace and I felt strong. I knew at some point I would face the pain from the ultimate human race, and this started to happen after the 70 kilometre mark with 20 kilometres to go.

Even though I felt the pain I always knew I had to keep moving towards the finish line. I had to activate the most advanced weapon in the ultra runner’s arsenal: instead of cringing from fatigue, you embrace it. You refuse to let it go. You get to know it so well, you’re not afraid of it anymore.

Even if I moved slowly I stood a greater chance of finishing the race if I didn’t stop to try and recover. So I kept moving. There is a lesson there: Even if you are moving slowly, going through a rough patch, if you keep moving towards your goal you have a greater chance of getting there. There was never a point from the start line that I doubted I would get to the finish line. There is another lesson there: Believe in yourself. Training is the cake and belief is the icing.

Support

Along my training journey and on race day I received tremendous support from friends and family. For someone who was going out there to attempt a self imposed crazy challenge, it was amazing. All the phone calls and messages, pre and post the race. I’m not going to list all your names here, you know yourselves. Massive thanks to all of you, I could not have done it without you all!

The value of support from other people has been reinforced in my mind. Let us keep encouraging others to push on, to chase their dreams, to succeed.

Now that the race is over. I am taking the suggested one month break from running. This will allow me to rest and recover properly as obviously my legs would have taken a beating after covering such an ultra distance. The temptation for most runners is to get back into races immediately, and granted some people do it, everyone is different. I believe in rest and recovery.

It has now been a couple of weeks since the race. Will I do it again? Well, a few minutes after finishing the race, in all the pain, I told myself never again. Then everyone started talking to me about going back for a back-to-back medal. Every year the Comrades Marathon is run in the opposite direction, so next year it will be the up run from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. They say the up run is easier on the legs. I’m not quite sure I’ve answered the question of whether I will do it again yet. At the moment I’m enjoying my one month break from running, post the race. Knowing myself, I would not be surprised if I’m lining up at the start line next year, ready to sing the South African national anthem, Shosholoza and Chariots of Fire again just before racing off.

I don’t know what sort of general significance running 90km by yourself has, but as an action that deviates from the ordinary yet doesn’t violate basic values, you would expect it to afford you a special sort of self-awareness. It should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view of your life, its limits and how far they can be pushed will have been transformed. This has happened to me. Asijiki (No Turning Back). #NoDaysOff

Today is my 29th birthday. I have always found writing to be a great way to leave a snapshot of my thoughts at any point in time. Given that a birthday is a great reflection point I have decided to write an article every year on my birthday. I hope to come back to these articles in the future and see what my thoughts were on each transition into a new age.

Last year on my birthday I wrote an article on what I think I have figured out about life.

Turning 29 makes you officially realise how close you are to turning 30. This realisation has left me reflecting on what my goals and ambitions were in my early 20s and what I thought I would have achieved by the time I’m 30. This year I would like to write about something that has been on my mind a lot lately.

I have been trying to figure out the best approach to achieving big goals, big ambitions. As a result I’ve asked myself the following questions:

1. Why do people talk about their big goals and ambitions and never start working on them?
2. For those that do start working on their big goals and ambitions, why do they fail catastrophically early on and give up?

A lot of people have fallen in these 2 buckets at some point in their life.

There are a number of reasons people end up in these 2 buckets. Big goals and ambitions by their nature (being big and complicated) are overwhelming and people often don’t know where to start. Analysis paralysis occurs, the state of over-analysing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken. Big goals are scary. The risk is higher, you stand to lose more if you fail, whether its money, time, motivation or your reputation.

We know that big goals and ambitions are difficult. So how do we resolve this? I believe everyone has some big goals and ambitions in their life at some point. I believe everyone would like to succeed in these big goals and ambitions. Is there a way to increase our chances at succeeding?

The answer lies in starting small. What I found helps me get around the paralysis and fear of big goals and ambitions is breaking down any task into small bite-size chunks. If we approach our big goals and ambitions by first breaking them down into very small steps, they become more manageable.

Small steps are not overwhelming. Small steps do not require large amounts of investment, whether its money, time, motivation or your reputation. Small steps allow you to review your progress frequently, which allows you to adjust accordingly if things are not going to plan. Small steps executed consistently build momentum, you have more moments to celebrate the small successes.

Small steps allow you to experiment and learn. My mentor often says I should pay attention to the lessons I’m learning now when things are small because the same lessons will be useful when things are bigger and scale up.

So the key is to start small and then scale up later. You can always then expand your small steps slowly into bigger changes. Don’t try to change the whole world right away. The way to change the world is by changing it in a small often unnoticeable way, one day at a time.

It’s great you want to make a big difference, just don’t miss the small differences you can make each day that add up to big differences. – Jim Kwik

Here are some examples of starting small:

Getting into a new fitness habit

Let me use running as an example since I am a runner. If you want to get into running, you do not start by going to run a marathon or even a half marathon. That is scary and even if you manage to make the attempt, you will probably feel a lot of pain for some days after that attempt. You want to start with small manageable distances to get your body used to running. At the beginning you can start with a small goal of running between 1km and 5km twice a week. Your goal initially could be to get to a point where you can run that distance without stopping to walk, even if you run at a very slow pace. Over time your body will get used to running this distance and you will be able to slowly start increasing the distance and run at a faster pace. You repeat this process with the new distance and keep scaling up. Before you know it you could be attempting the Comrades Marathon.

Starting a new business

We often look at large successful businesses and think they have been operating and that large scale from the start. What we often miss is that most successful business started small and grew slowly into the giants they are today. Nike the worldwide brand started with its founder Phil Knight selling running shoes at athletics meet ups out of the boot of his car. Shoe Dog, a memoir by the creator of Nike is a brilliant book covering most of the company’s humble beginning and growth story. Amazon began just as an online book store. It has since become a retail store for everything. These are just some examples of companies that started with a small focus in one area and have since scaled to much bigger things. If you are going to start your own new business, you should aim to start small, focus on a small area that satisfies your customers needs, then you can always slowly scale up from there. You can have large ambitious plans for the business, but always start small and keep those ambitious plans for the long term.

Starting to save money

Let us use an example of someone who has never had a money saving habit before. If you decide to be more responsible and start saving money then you must start with small manageable amounts. You cannot just say I’m going to start saving half my salary from this month when all the previous months you have been spending all your earnings. It will be too big a change and you are setting yourself up for failure. The ideal approach would be to pick a much smaller amount, for example 5% of your earnings. As you succeed in saving this small amount each month, you can then start increasing the savings amount again in small manageable increases. Eventually you may find yourself comfortably saving half your earnings each month.

The best things we know and love started as tiny things. – Joel Gascoigne

Next time you have an overwhelming big goal or ambition. Ask yourself if you can break it down into smaller manageable steps. This lesson can be applied in all areas of life. Whether they are family goals, fitness and health goals, financial goals, work goals, the list goes on.

Breaking things down into small manageable steps is the secret sauce to starting, and starting is often what you need to build that much needed momentum. Having a dream is one thing, actually executing it is another. Don’t be afraid to think big, but start small. I’m looking forward to seeing how many small experiments I can try in the next year as I approach the big 30.

Never Settle!

Tanaka Mutakwa (The General)

Today is my 28th birthday. I have always found writing to be a great way to leave a snapshot of my thoughts at any point in time. Given that a birthday is a great reflection point I thought I could leave a snapshot of 28 year old Tanaka’s mindset.

Here is what I think I have figured out about life. I am hoping to come back in the future, look at this snapshot and see what my mindset was like at 28.

1) If there is one gift you can give your close family and friends it is the gift of your time. If there is any opportunity to spend some quality time with close family and friends always use it. Never underestimate the value of this or prioritise it lower than other things. The happiest moments in my life have been memories shared with friends and family. Time flies and you never know when things will change and you don’t get these opportunities anymore.

2) Always have the hunger to learn. Stay curious. The world is changing at a very fast pace. The people with the hunger and ability to learn new things will survive this fast paced change. Don’t get stuck in old ways. Be a life-long learner.

3) While we are on the topic of learning. Take every opportunity to learn something from everyone you interact with. There is always something someone else is better than you at. You will never be the best at everything. If you have an open mind and are observant enough there is always something to learn from others. Some people and some environments will teach you what not to do. If a friend or relative goes through a bad patch try and understand the root cause of the problem, so you can avoid ever making the same mistakes in the future.

4) When in doubt – ask. Never be afraid to admit that you do not know. That is the way you learn. Throw away any false pride.

5) Have some integrity. If you say you will do something, give all your effort to get it done.

6) Accept and learn when you are wrong. Nobody is perfect. You will make big mistakes at some point in your life. The important part is to acknowledge the mistakes and take active steps to ensure you learn from them and you do not repeat them.

7) Give people a chance. Do not be so quick to judge people for their actions and what they are not good at. You probably do not have full details on the environment they grew up in or how they were raised. Given the right support people can surprise you with how quickly they can change, grow and master things. I’ve been given chances in my life by people who believed in me when others would have not. Read this point again before moving on to the next one.

8) Have a fulfilling job. If you have a 9-5 job it means you spend a large part of your life at work. If you are going to spend so much time at a place you should at the very least enjoy your time there. This means the work you do should be engaging, you should support your company’s purpose, you should be constantly learning from your peers, and you should be good friends with most of your work colleagues. I have had many conversations with friends who hate their jobs or hate their managers. You need to get out of that environment. Only you can make the change. Don’t delay it. It probably shortens your life through stress.

9) Be bold! There is an African proverb that goes “A man who hangs around a beautiful girl without speaking his intentions ends up fetching water for guests at her wedding.” Most things are not as risky as they seem. All you need is to believe in yourself and go for it. Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very difficult to fail completely. That’s the thing that people don’t get.

10) Be active! Take part in a physical activity regularly. It could be hiking, running, cycling or just taking walks often. It could be taking part in a team sport such as soccer, action netball or action cricket. Find whichever physical activity suits you, one which you enjoy. There are many benefits to being active, listing them is worthy of an article in itself. However the most important benefits in my opinion are the health benefits. Too many young people are letting themselves go after they start working. Don’t let yourself be one of these people. It is never too late to start. My preferred physical activity is running, last year I wrote a post about why I run.

11) Get enough sleep on most days, that is around 8 hours for most people. Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honour. Listen to your body and take relaxing breaks when you need them. I know the irony in this is that I am the founder of a lifestyle brand called NoDaysOff. Even with that I suggest you take NoDaysOff in resting to take care of yourself. Avoid junk food and eat healthy food often. You will be amazed how much of a difference these things can make to your life.

12) Think ahead. Things don’t just happen. You make them happen! What are you going to do this week to get you closer to achieving your goals? Write it down and make it happen. Have clear goals for yourself every day, every year, and every decade.

13) The only constant in life is change. The world changes. People change. Your friends will change. You will change the places you live. You will change jobs. You should not always try to fight this change. Sometimes trying to hold on leaves you stuck. Move forward. You’ve got to keep moving.

14) Time flies. One moment you are in primary school, wondering when you will ever become an adult. Next thing you are a fully grown adult with so many responsibilities and you are struggling to keep up. While there is a place for resting and relaxing, never waste time. If you get the sense that you are wasting time it means you probably are, trust your instincts and get out of that habit. Understand the value of time in everything you do.

15) Enjoy the special moments such as your graduation day, or the day you start a new relationship. Remember though that moments are just moments and what is important is to actually live by what the moments define. After you graduate you need to make use of the degree / diploma you receive in the real world. After you get into a relationship be committed to make it work in its entirety.

16) Travel and explore places outside your normal area. You can learn a lot from other people outside of your normal environment of comfort. Even if it means travelling across the country you live in. If you can, you must also travel to other countries across the world.

17) Be a self starter. Don’t wait for people tell you what to do all the time. There is self fulfilling value in seeing progress in something you thought about, took action on and completed.

18) Don’t regret things. Learn from them. Regret is past tense decision making.

19) If you are thinking about holding any leadership role in your life. The best way to lead is by your actions not what you say. Inspiration from words is often short-lived, however from your actions people can learn that many things are possible and they will be able to follow your lead. Leadership is also about growing people. Imagine you get to the end of your career and you say, “Here are all of the people I developed, I coached, I inspired, I built, I made stronger, faster.”

20) You are never too old or too young. I’ve seen very old people complete marathons and ultra-marathons. In the same way we’ve all seen very young people start and go on to lead global companies (Zuckerberg – Facebook. Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown – Snapchat).

21) Great things take time. Don’t rush things. Be patient. Have a long term mindset. Think long term but make slight progress towards the end goal on a daily basis.

22) There are a few times when it is ok to give up and try new things. Most of the time don’t give up. Push on and things will come together. Deciding when to give up is a skill in itself.

23) Be happy. Your happiness in life is probably the right metric to use to measure success.

24) Understand how habits work. Most of your actions whether good or bad are performed via habits. If you can master how to learn and unlearn habits then you will have some control over your life. If you enjoy reading one of the best books I have read on this is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. If you are not a fan of reading you can look for some of his videos.

25) Be positive. The world has so much negative word spreading. Just watch news for a few minutes to see how much negativity is reported. You would almost think there is nothing positive that occurs in this world. Yet in fact there is a lot positive progress that happens daily. Be one of the people that shares the positive side of things. You never know whose life you can have a positive influence on. Be optimistic and inspire others.

26) On money. Try and learn as much as you can about money. How you should manage your money. How to build financial discipline. How the economy works. The school system does not do justice on educating people about money. I’m still learning.

27) Still on the topic of money. While having a good sum of money is great, never let money be your primary motivator to do things. It can be crippling, often leading you to do things that are an anti-pattern. Such as staying in a bad work environment just because it pays you well. Yes you should be paid for your worth but more importantly you should rather optimise for your own happiness.

28) A side effect of being ambitious and doing well is that a lot opportunities will present themselves toward you. Choose wisely. Sometimes it is ok to say no to a great opportunity because you have others in the pipeline already. You can always come back to some opportunities later on in life. Avoid taking on too much. There is great value in being focussed and seeing things through.

29) Your attitude will take you far. I remember back in my school days I realised that if I put in some extra effort in everything I did, the teachers and coaches would notice. Even if I wasn’t the best in that class or sport I would leave a mark because of my hard working attitude. This is something I still believe in to this day. Going the extra mile will leave you in a good place.

30) You are going to go through some difficult times in your life. Everyone does. It is part of being human. Have a set of people who form part of your core support system. These people can be family or friends. These people will help carry you through your difficult moments in life. You can return the favour when they need you to carry them too one day.

31) Run your own race. This is your life. A lot of people spend significant portions of their lives trying to create an image other people will credit them for. This is achievable, however you may find after achieving this you are still not happy. Don’t chase prestige, go for what makes you genuinely happy. Be yourself!

That is it. Hopefully with each year that comes I will become much wiser. I will be able to refine some of these ideas and maybe add more as I grow. Never Settle! NoDaysOff!