Whether face-to-face or online, our team of HSC specialists have got you covered! We are determined to help our HSC 2020 and 2021 students smash their HSC goals.

Get into contact with us via messaging our live chat or calling us on 1300 967 890. 

 

Check out our previous post on why output matters by clicking here.

The post HSC Success Is All in the Mind: Education Today appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

22 years after Jordan won his last NBA championship he has maintained universal relevance due to the qualities he displayed as an athlete on the basketball court which we can all relate to as being the same qualities to achieve success on the court of life. 

What I love about Michael Jordan is he aligns his success with key behaviours rather than talent or entitlement. He was always the hardest working person in the room regardless of the fame and success he had already achieved. 

If key behaviours are good enough for Michael Jordan then they’re good enough for each of us. 

Here are a collection of Key Behaviour inspired quotes from one of my heroes. 

Thanks for the guidance Michael! 

A COLLECTION OF MICHAEL JORDAN QUOTES ON THE KEY BEHAVIOURS:

“You can practice shooting 8 hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.” 

 “The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether it’s proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.” 

ENGAGE YOUR VISION:

“Every time I feel tired while I am exercising and training, I close my eyes to see that picture, to see that list with my name. This usually motivates me to work again.”

TRAIN. DAILY:

“If you do the work you get rewarded. There are no shortcuts in life.”

“Everybody has talent, but ability takes hard work.”

PUSH YOUR COMFORT ZONE:

“If it turns out that my best wasn’t good enough, at least I won’t look back and say I was afraid to try.”

“Failure is acceptable. but not trying is a whole different ball park.” 

GRIT:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” 

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” 

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

“If you quit once it becomes a habit. Never quit!”

“To learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail.”

OWN IT:

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” 

“Sometimes, things may not go your way, but the effort should be there every single night.” 

Our HSC Specialists are ready to take any questions you have about the HSC process or about how your child can take control of their HSC year and achieve the results which they deserve.

Get into contact with us via messaging our live chat or calling us on 1300 967 890. 

 

Check out our previous blog post on our measured performance index by clicking here. 

The post Michael Jordan and the HSC CoWorks Key Behaviours appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

In 178 days from now the first HSC exam will have been sat.

It’s April today but soon it will be May and then it will be June.

Right now is a significant moment because right now there is a choice available.

YOUR CHOICE:

Option 1: – Finish 13 years of schooling with no regrets and throw everything you have at conquering your Mount HSC.

OR:

Option 2: – Say ‘it’s too hard’, CoronaVirus ruined my HSC, ‘I just can’t get motivated’.

This is more than a significant moment.

It’s a choice between becoming

1) An accomplished mountain climber or

2) Someone who doesn’t know how to climb mountains.

Life is full of mountains so embrace the struggle and learn to climb mountains would be our advice.

Our HSC Specialists are ready to take any questions you have about the HSC process or about how your child can take control of their HSC year and achieve the results which they deserve.

Get into contact with us via messaging our live chat or calling us on 1300 967 890. 

Check out our previous blog post on how to overcome your lack of motivation by clicking here. 

 

“After doing online school all day, I love the motivation that CoWorks Online gives me and the accountability that it provides“

– HSC CoWorks Student 2020.

The post Right Now: A Significant Moment appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

 

We are talking about the ‘soft skills’ which are becoming more and more recognised for determining one’s success and you’re going to have to develop these skills at some stage so why not now!?

At HSC CoWorks we have broken these skills down into 6 student key behaviours and once a student has learnt and then applied these key behaviours, they will not only find it easier to navigate their HSC year, but will be ready for life after school!

The post Why the HSC is about much more than an ATAR appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

The world is changing faster than ever before, and with it, jobs are rapidly disappearing and workplaces being reinvented. We’re in the early phases of a second industrial revolution, as the rise of automation, artificial intelligence and robotics looms, and the fate of traditional employment hangs in the balance.

While robots will eventually replace many human workers, their implementation will see the rise of jobs that we’ve rarely considered, and other more traditional areas will thrive as the population grows older and the world changes around us.

Following is a snapshot of the future, showcasing jobs we never could have imagined, which are in line to become the new normals.

DATA ANALYSTS

We are creating more data than ever before — right now, humans create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, and as the world moves further into technology, our data output will continue to increase. In fact, IDC predict that, by 2020, every human on the planet will generate around 1.7 megabytes of new data every single second of the day.

The World Economic Forum surveyed thousands of CEOs from around the globe and across various industries, and the overwhelming majority agreed that data analysts were on the top of their ‘to hire’ list.

For companies, information will become the most important, most valuable currency, and so it is vital that they have experts capable of using this to its full potential. Data analysts will be as important to the Information Age as the prospector was to the Gold Rush.

After all, what’s the point in having all of this data, if you can’t mine it for all its worth? For businesses, plenty of data means tonnes of opportunities to mine this information for rich consumer insights, leading to better marketing and therefore better sales.

VR

Virtual reality, or VR, is tipped to become the next dominant platform after smartphones, with experts predicting that, by 2025, we will spend hours each day in digital spaces, working, learning and playing.

Entire worlds will be created for us to explore, and they will be so immersive, interactive and realistic that they will be almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

The VR takeover it already underway. According to market researchers CCS Insight, more than 12 million virtual reality headsets will be sold in 2017. And, by 2020, the total global market for VR technology will be worth $40bn.

Over the next ten years, a new global industry will develop, creating, supporting and managing these new virtual domains, that will eventually become a part of our normal, everyday lives.

ROBOTICS

According to research by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the global robotics market is set to boom to a massive $153 billion over the next five years — $70 billion for artificial intelligence systems, and $83 billion for robots.

By next year, there will be over 50 thousand new jobs in robotics alone, and this will continue to grow by 5% each year. Autonomous robots will account for almost a quarter of the annual growth in automation every year until 2024, dominating the smart machine market.

Until robots can build themselves, there will be plenty of positions available in the robotics industry, compromising everything from engineering right through to ethical rights.

FREELANCE BIOHACKING

Biohacking is perhaps one of the most exciting industries set to blossom in the future, bringing together teams of scientists from all over the globe to cure disease, reverse extinction and facilitate mass scientific breakthroughs.

Hank Greely, director of Stanford University’s Centre for Law and the Biosciences says it isn’t hard to imagine a future where we’ll “fix everything from eye problems to liver disorders to muscular dystrophy with targeted genetic tweaks”. He sees promise in almost everything, from finding a next generation of antibiotics, to the creation of genetically modified creatures.

He even jokes that bio-hackers will be able to create a unicorn, in the future, ready for ‘“some billionaire’s 12 year old daughter.”

Feng Zhang, co-creator of gene editing innovator CRISPR, believes that biohackers will help to save – or even bring back from extinction – species of wild and domestic animals. Many people already working in the early versions of the biohacking field believe that future biohackers will hold the best hope of game-shifting science and technology breakthroughs because they are not tied down by the bureaucracy of mainstream research.

The magic is in the flexibility — right now, academics have to fill in millions of forms, wasting time and money in the process. This hinders radical research, but in the future, freelance biohackers will just do it anyway, curing people without having to jump through the hoops first.

As Zhang says, “give people access to these tools and technology, and we’ll let them loose to change the world.”

IOT DATA CREATIVE

Over the next decade, everything from our homes and businesses will become intertwined in the ‘Internet of Things’. The IoT draws together billions of digitally connected devices, compromising everything from fridges, washing machines, entertainment systems and energy control centres — our lives will essentially begin to look a lot like Tony Starks, with everything constantly talking to each other, and talking to us.

A measure of how all-encompassing the IoT will become can be seen in the steep growth in sales of connected devices already. IDC predicts the global market for IoT technology will grow from $1.9 trillion in 2013 to $7.1 trillion in 2020.

Connected devices will control everything — they will monitor our health, manage our work, restock food, automatically call for help when something is wrong and organise our leisure plans.

However, this constant, ongoing deluge of information must be managed effectively, to be used in a way that will allow us to improve both our lives and the future versions of the devices.

This challenge will see the creation of an entirely new industry, one that is starting to emerge now.

The demand for IoT developers rose by 215% last year, and information security analysts by 113%.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research predicts that, in the UK alone, there will be 182’000 new jobs created, and $531 billion will be added to the economy, by 2020.

SPACE TOURISM

It seems like something out of the movies, but before we know it, space will be just another brochure that you pick up from the travel agency. Earth orbit will become the newest destination for intergalactic holidays by as early as the mid 2020s, and whole new categories of jobs will pop up, in order to make space discovery both safe and enjoyable.

Space Tour Guides will work much like those on the ground, using their knowledge of satellites, space junk and the leftovers of missions in order to craft the perfect tour through orbit.

They will also work to find, plot and record the locations of forgotten or abandoned spacecrafts, to create a log of ‘orbiting memorabilia’ from man’s first half century of space exploration.

RE-WILDING STRATEGIST

By 2025, over 9 billion humans will call the Earth home, stretching our natural ecosystems to the absolute limit. Mega-cities will drain resources, and demands will continue to increase daily, meaning that traditional conservation strategies will no longer be enough.

Re-wilding Strategists will stitch together viable ecosystems in stressed landscapes, using patchworks of flora and fauna from all over the world, rather than worrying about only using indigenous species.

Along with bio-hackers, they will reintroduce extinct plants and animals that may have been lost for centuries, and manage assisted migrations to ensure the creation of resilient and vibrant landscapes in the face of advancing climate change.

The strategists will also look to innovation, discovering ways to ‘re-wild’ the remnants of our industrial past. Abandoned steel towns, defunct coal mines and factories will be turned back to land, as re-wilders turn them into forests filled with animals and plants rather than preserving them as sterile heritage sites.

HUMAN BODY DESIGNER

While this job seems like a deep dive into the world of science fiction, human body design and enhancement is not too far away. Over the next twenty tears, bio-engineers will have extended the average human lifespan to more than a century, as the growth of replacement organs and tissues becomes an affordable norm.

Design skills will be combined with bio-engineering knowledge to create huge ranges of customised body parts, whether to perfectly match a subjects existing body, or entirely change it.

We will also see the emergence of body modification in ways we can only imagine right now — human body designers will be responsible for crafting exotic new looks or enhanced functionality for particular jobs or sports.

Pop-up body shops will become part of every virtual and bricks and mortar shopping centre, giving us more options than ever before, for health and for vanity.

PERSONAL CONTENT CREATOR

Our bodies won’t be the only thing open to change and innovation — our minds will soon become a place for change, too. By the late 2020s, software-brain interfaces, led by teams of neuroscientists, will begin to enter the mainstream, allowing mass audiences to read and capture thoughts, memories and dreams.

Personal Content Creators will help people to use these systems to increase the storage capacity of their over-stretched minds, providing services that allow them to dip in and out of treasured memories and experiences at will.

PCC’s will also help to curate the memories and experiences of the recently deceased, so that their family and friends can obtain a ‘showreel’ of their lives.

The future is closer than ever before, and work as we know it is starting to change.

For tips on how to prepare yourself for this exciting, but uncertain future, check out our article here about future proofing yourself.

The post The Jobs of The Future appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

Could a robot do your job, or the job you hope to hold in the future?

For millions of people, the answer is a resounding, deafening yes. A tsunami of automation is on its way, bringing artificial intelligence, driverless cars, nano-technology and robots to the workforce, but threatening traditional jobs in its wake.

Employment as we know it is about to be drastically revolutionised, in fact a study conducted by the World Economic Forum predicts that as many as 5 million jobs could be lost to technology by 2020. Similarly, McKinsey & Company estimates that around 30% of tasks in 60% of occupations could be computerised.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however — this technological revolution will create millions of exciting new career opportunities in sectors that are only in their infancy today. The trick is to be prepared for this shift, but that requires a dive into the unknown — 65% of today’s students will be doing jobs that don’t even exist yet. So, how can you be prepared for something that doesn’t yet exist? Versatility, it seems, is the key.

Single skill-set jobs in decline

We’re already seeing disruption in the marketplace, specifically in jobs that only require one isolated skill set. In recent years, for example, many positions that only required mathematical skills have already been automated. So to have bank tellers, cashiers and statistical clerks suffered. However, roles which require predominantly social skills, such as childcare for example, tend to be paid poorly due to the oversupply of potential workers. Studies have shown that a combination of skills is vital for the ever-changing landscape of future employment.

IT’S NOT ONLY ROBOTS

The future will bring much more change than just technology. Employment demands will also shift due to climate change, ageing populations, the rise of the middle class, and the changing role of women in the workplace. The accumulation of automation and these various drivers will ultimately lead to a mass disruption of labour.

The way that we seek and gain employment is also changing. Job matching sites such as Monster and LinkedIn are already changing that way that companies identify and recruit talent, as well as the way that individuals look for opportunities. Independent workers are also increasingly using the internet to offer their services through freelancing platforms such as UpWork and Freelancer, while platforms like Etsy, Airbnb and Uber are challenging conventional ideas about how and where work is undertaken.

ONGOING CHANGES

Creative and people-focused industries seem safe for the near future, but the rapid advancements in technology make it impossible to mark any sector as truly secure. We can’t underestimate just how much computers could change the working world. Many make assumptions about the indispensability of humans in creation, for instance, but machines are already composing original music and winning complex games online using creative strategies. With this in mind, it’s hard to confidently plan a long term career, unless you expand your skills and change your mindset.

Now so, more than ever, does Richard Branson’s adaptability advice ring true — “If someone offers you an amazing opportunity and you are not sure you can do it, say yes. Then learn how to do it later.”

PREPARATION

More and more independent thinkers are realising that traditional employment is the equivalent to putting all your money into one stock – you’re entirely investing in one area that could disappear over night. A better strategy is to diversify your portfolio, and expand your skills.

Futurist Faith Popcorn says we have to becomes as agile as possible, as soon as possible, if we hope to survive in future work landscapes. Her advice is to “have many forms of talent and work that you can provide the economy. She predicts a world in which we’ll all have seven or eight jobs, with average adults working for a number of businesses simultaneously, rather than just working for one big corporation.

THE (SEEMINGLY) SAFE ZONE

For now, at least, there are areas which see a better future than others, as defined by Ford, another futurist. He classifies particularly resilient jobs into three areas —

The first sector of jobs involves genuine creativity, such as being an artist, a scientist, or innovating business strategies and marketing. Ford notes, “for now, humans are still best at creativity but there’s a caveat there. I can’t guarantee you that in 20 years a computer won’t be the most creative entity on the planet. There are already computers that can paint original works of art. So, in 20 years who knows how far it’s going to go?”

The second area of resilience lies in complex relationship building with people — for example, nursing, aged care and business roles that require ongoing, tight knit relationships with clientele, or company representatives, who travel to advertise new products.

The third area belongs to those who cater to the unpredictable, but the jobs are also unpredictable in nature — for example, a plumber who services emergencies, in different areas, at any time of day.

STRETCH IT OUT

Authors Karie Willyerd and Barbara Mistick think the trick to staying relevant in the workplace is the ability to Stretch, and such is the title of their book. In it, they urge us to “stretch how we learn, stretch to stay open in our thinking, stretch to build diverse networks and experiences, and stretch our motivation.”

In preparing for a stretch mindset, Willyerd and Misteck have created three specific calls to action, or “Stretch Imperatives” —

• It’s All On You (don’t be passive – take control of your situation, learn on the fly and be open)
• You Need Options (one size definitely doesn’t fit all – build a diverse network and be greedy about experiences)
• You Have Dreams (developing as a person, for the future – bounce forward)

In order to implement these, the authors consider grit, resilience and motivation as the key traits you need, in order to prepare for the future, however uncertain it may be. While all of this seems scary, and diving into a fast-changing, unpredictable workplace may feel daunting, the automation of menial tasks will open up a world of opportunities that we can’t imagine, right now.

Thirty years ago, if you told somebody that one day, we would all carry a device in our pockets that could connect us to the whole world, and answer almost any question, they wouldn’t believe it.

Imagine what could change in another thirty years from now.

The post Future Proof Your Career Path appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

Maybe you’ve only ever thought that you can make money or be happy when you choose your career. That seems like an extremely hard choice, right? Either you find a job that makes you satisfied and happy to go to work every morning, or you get a job you despise purely because it pays well.

How do you choose?

Maybe we can suggest that the two aren’t your only options or that they aren’t mutually exclusive. There’s always another way to think about it.

Being Happy With Your Job

As you browse the internet, you’ll probably come across quotes that say stuff like, “When you wake up every morning excited to do your job, you’ll never work a day in your life”. That makes you think that you should find a job that makes you happy. Right?

Not necessarily.

Being happy is what people think it’s like when you’ve made it, when you’re sitting on the top of success, when you’ve gotten everything in life you’ve ever wanted. That’s when you’re happy. Only, that’s a horrible way to look a life. Because nobody ever feels like they’ve achieved everything they ever wanted. Even the richest person looks at something they don’t have and works to attain that.

It’s a poor definition of the word, though. Life isn’t about being happy; it’s about being satisfied. You should find meaning in what you do. That little transformation makes all the difference in how you choose a career. If you find meaning in it, if you can find satisfaction in your job being well done, that make you satisfied. You might not be ‘happy’ all the time, but you have meaning, which matters much more.

Making Money with Your Job

The other side of the coin is that many people choose a job because it gives them money. They might not like it, they might not have wanted it growing up, but it pays pretty well. Seeking a satisfying paycheque isn’t bad; it just shouldn’t be the end goal of how you choose a career.

Haven’t you ever wondered how you hear all those stories of people who’ve won the lottery continuing to be miserable, losing all their money within a few years, and feeling worse off than ever? Haven’t you wanted to just have the chance to test to see if that would be true for you? Money might not buy happiness, you say, but I sure would like to find out for myself.

Studies show that after a certain point of income, money does nothing for us anymore. We seek a paycheque to avoid the pain, not to gain happiness. Once you have enough money to avoid a painful life, that’s all that matters.

That means that it’s not a bad thing to seek out a career that makes you money, but you shouldn’t try to find satisfaction from it. Your satisfaction should come from somewhere else than your money. You should be defined not by your career (“I’m a doctor. I’m a pharmacist. I’m a solicitor”), but as a person who happens to have this profession (“I’m an avid fisherman who happens to practice law. I love to bake cakes when I’m not at the pharmacy.”)

Should you make money or be happy with your job? It turns out you can have both.

The post Do I Make Money or Be Happy? appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

The internet has opened up pathways for people to make money like never before. Sites like Pinterest, Etsy, and YouTube allow people to make a career based on their passions and creativity. And that’s not even counting the freelancers offering their creative works to the highest bidder on sites like Guru or UpWork. What are some of the surprising careers that I’m speaking about?

Typefont Artist

A typefont artist is someone who crafts words and paints them or sells their works as art. The words are handcrafted and are beautiful and unique. As a career, a sign painter is resurging as a growing market. It used to be a thriving market 50 years ago for typefont artists. Now, as more businesses are looking to be stand out, a hand-lettered sign, menu, or advertisement is a popular choice.

Home Food Producers

There is an interesting trade in India for people who work all day but still want a home cooked lunch. The food is cooked at home and delivery men, also called food-wallahs, deliver the home-cooked meals to the men at their place of business. That idea is taking hold here as well. People crave food that is authentic, healthy, and nutritious. Enterprising home cooks offer a week’s worth of homemade lunches delivered to their workplace every day. It’s healthy, home-cooked, and personalized to taste.

Home Physical Therapists

It’s not artisanal, but it is a career that is expanding. Imagine having the ability to work anywhere and everywhere by freelancing your physical therapy skills. People value a home service, especially those who can’t get to a clinic. A home therapist visits clients in their home, working through their daily tasks and helping them recover from ailments or injuries. The job market is one of the highest growing markets, and the pay is exceptionally good.

Anybody can make a career out of anything. The internet and rapidly changing technologies make it easy to create a good job from something that didn’t even exist 10 years ago. What will come next? Maybe you’ll be the first to tell me.

The post Be the First: Careers That Have Changed Through the Years appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

They are the hotshots who put money into fledgling businesses before anyone else believes in them. There are incredible success stories of investors getting in early on some of the biggest companies today. A small investment in AirBnB or Uber or Twitter just a few years ago would be worth billions. As Justin Timberlake said in “The Social Network”, a million dollars is cool, but do you know what’s cooler? A billion dollars.

Venture capitalists have to understand how a business works. Usually, they are people who have built up their own businesses and have the experience about how a business grows and succeeds and also have experience with challenges and failing. From their experience, they know if something will flop over and die or flip into the billions of dollars in profit. The wisdom is to put the money on the one that flips, not the one that flops.

Venture capitalists get to hear about new and interesting ideas before anyone else does. They often own “equity” in the company, which means they pay their money as an investment, and they get to own a part of that company. Later on, when the company is sold to Facebook for 19 billion dollars like WhatsApp, the venture capitalists who only spent a fraction of that a few years early get to have a piece of that pie.

The best part is that there is no shortage of people trying to come up with the next Facebook or Reddit or Snapchat. There will always be entrepreneurs and ideas, so a venture capitalist will always have the chance to find that diamond in the rough. Most start off small, finding businesses that need just a few thousand dollars, and they build their enterprise from there.

It’s a challenging path, but the venture capitalist that has parts of companies like Instagram is not complaining about it.

The post Jobs of the Future: Everything to Gain in Venture Capital appeared first on HSC CoWorks.

The best part is that the most successful entrepreneurs are often university dropouts or never even bothered to go.

That’s no excuse to be lazy, but it is certainly interesting to see how an entrepreneur thinks. If you’re always looking for ways to gain an edge or solve a problem for someone else, this is the future for you. There are no required classes, no speciality schools; no courses to take that can effectively teach you how to be an entrepreneur.

Your class is your customer and what they think of your business idea. Will they pay money for it? If not, you’ve learned one more way not to sell something. Your school is the marketplace. If you think you can come up with a better way to do a service, you can learn from how others did it before you and then offer something better. Your specialised course is effort and failure. It’s the entrepreneur who learns failure early and keeps on putting in the effort that ends up succeeding.

A lack of failure means that you aren’t trying hard enough. Which is a failure in itself.

Entrepreneurs simply look at the world as it is and ask if there if that is the only way to do something. Or they notice problems no one else notices. For example, nobody really thought a taxi service was broken. They might not be always reliable, but nobody really saw a need there to change it up.

Until Uber came along.

Now everyone wonders how they got along without it in the first place.  This is what an entrepreneur can do, and what you can achieve with a lot of effort and a few failures to learn from. Becoming an entrepreneur isn’t an excuse to skip out on school. It’s a chance to tell the schools that you’re going to work harder, learn more, and become more successful than they could ever make you.

The post Jobs of the Future: Become an Entrepreneur, Do Your Own Thing appeared first on HSC CoWorks.