To form habits, financial or otherwise, you have to put in the work. Often that means making small changes or tweaks consistently over a long period of time. Days, weeks, months, years — if you really want to change your behaviour, you have to commit yourself to something for a long time.

During a media briefing at Seagate's 40th birthday commemoration, the company's head of operations for products and strategy, Jeffrey Nygaard, discussed the changing nature of Seagate's workforce and how long-term staff need to be retrained as the skills needed to build the next generation of storage devices evolves. That's something every business embracing automation needs to consider.

Red and Blue teaming is a commonly used technique for honing the skills of information security teams. But setting them up and ensuring you have access to enough appropriately skilled participants can be a challenge for many businesses. Cisco has worked to allay some of those challenges through the establishment of Cyber Range - an environment that simulates over 50 real world threat scenarios. And, last year, they let teams of high school students loose in Cyber Range during a Cyber Games competition held at La Trobe University.

Some things in life -- such as fixing your own car or DIY home improvements -- might appear dangerous or risky, especially if you've never done them before or you tend to err on the side of caution. They also might be more doable than they look. Here are ten daunting things you probably likely can handle on your own.

Craig Davies is the leader of AustCyber, a government agency charged with making Australia the leading centre for cybersecurity education and growing the Australian cyber industry. Davies' goal is not for Australia to be "a" leader - he want us to be "the" leader.

Did your parents ever encourage you to play less video games while growing up? Ours too. Doubtlessly, they thought it was a waste of time that could be better spent playing and learning outdoors. After all, what can jumping on Goombas and firing hadoukens possibly teach you about the real world?

As it turns out, quite a lot. Here are the real-life skills and lessons we've picked up during a lifetime of gaming: from telling left from right to understanding the importance of imagination.

Skillsoft has launched CodeX, a new virtual coding practice lab that provides coding exercises with embedded video content. It offers hardware labs for products from Cisco, Microsoft, VMware and CompTIA with tools such as Android Studio 2.3.3, Eclipse, Eclipse Neon, IDLE 3.4, IPython (Anaconda 4.4) and Microsoft Visual Studio.

Last weekend's Mayweather/McGregor fight was a lesson in many things. But the result, which most experts predicted, took longer than some expected. Ultimately, Mayweather was able to outlast his opponent who, despite lots of preparation, was more accustomed to fighting five rounds, totalling 25 minutes, rather than 12 three-minute rounds. This teaches us a lot about specificity.

If you've always wanted to learn how to juggle, you'll be happy to know it's actually pretty easy to learn. All you need is a little patience -- and a few plastic bags.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that those who read faster tend to do better in school and work. After all, being able to rapidly ingest and comprehend information means you can apply it faster, which makes the Award-Winning Speed Reading Bundle a worthwhile investment.

Pretty much every week I receive a research report, often sponsored by a large IT vendor, telling me about the IT skills shortage. Most of them are focussed on infosec but today's instalment of the "Great IT Skills Shortage" came from AWS.

At the AWS Summit being held in Auckland, analysis from job site Indeed shows job listings for AWS-related roles has increased by 153% over the last three years. It's time for IT employers to do something about it. There's no IT skills shortage. But I think there's a massive shortfall in career investment by incumbent and prospective employers.

We've all heard about the skills shortage facing the tech industry. So, it's not surprising that people who have lost jobs in "legacy" industries are seeking to retrain and transition into what IBM calls "

Not a day passes when someone I interview or a new piece of research appears bemoaning the IT skills shortage. New research, released today by SolarWinds, suggests the shift to hybrid IT infrastructure is exacerbating the gap as companies struggle to find people who can blend on-prem and cloud solutions.

Practise is an important factor in mastering any skill. You want the hours you put in to be as effective as possible so you can improve steadily. Here are four keys to making sure your practise is effective.

There are lots of skills that you can learn to advance your career, but instead of tackling all of them, focus instead on building one or two "hip pocket" skills that set you apart from your colleagues.

Pop psychologist Malcolm Gladwell is best known for the principle that it takes 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" to master a skill.

But 10,000 hours is kind of a long time, and I'm not really great with committing to things.

Instead, over the next year, I want to see what happens if I try and level up some new skills in in 1/3600th of that time: 10,000 seconds. About 2 hours and 47 minutes.

And to start off, I need your suggestions!

Challenges are a fun way to help improve your skills in a particular area. If you want to get better at photography, or you just like taking pictures, PetaPixel has a fun 52-week photo challenge anyone can join.

If you've ever gotten the impression that most people aren't as skilled with computers as you are, you finally have some data to back it up. The above chart shows the distribution of tech skills, and there's a pretty narrow pool at the top almost everywhere.

This week, ManpowerGroup released its 11th annual Talent Shortage Survey which takes a snapshot of the most in-demand occupations in Australia. It found that 38 per cent of Australian employers are having difficulties filling job vacancies due to talent shortages. If you're looking for work (or a high-paying career change), these are the skills you should be training up in.