Jay Pillay: Speed humps and effort accelerators

Speed humps are designed to slow vehicles down for the safety of road users.

Let’s imagine that our learners’ calendar from January to December is a journey.

Too often, we arrive at our term-end mini-destinations all too quickly. And we know we could have done better. What happened?

We don’t need speed humps to slow us down. We need ‘effort accelerators’.

We create effort accelerators whenever we create an awareness of time passing. Effort accelerators remind us to squeeze all we can out of time.

Use a ruler to enclose the 10 weeks of Term 3 within bold red lines. Mark off each week as it passes.

Oh, and pin the calendar where you can see it several times a day.

Every time you see it – that’s an effort accelerator you’re looking at.

If there’s no wall calendar in your homework corner at home, get one. Get two.

Or go digital.

Then go to Monday, July 20 on your phone calendar, and create an event called Week 1 of 10 Effort Accelerator, occurring at 08:00.

Set this to repeat 10 times in total, once per week. That will take you to the Monday of the last week of Term 3.

Set an alert for one day before the event.

Every Sunday, you’ll see this event. And you’ll wonder, what is an effort accelerator?

You’ll think about it, and then you’ll know. And you’ll realise that (say) two weeks of Term 3 have gone already. And you’ll speed up the effort you put in.

You’re likely to be in a vehicle driving over a speed hump, on Tuesday, July 21, when the third term of 2026 starts.

Let that remind you to tell at least one schoolmate what an effort accelerator is. Don’t be the only one to know.

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