I think that, in general, knowledge – that is, specialized knowledge about specific subjects – can give a person a certain measure of “power”, by which I mean they can sound smarter than the next guy. And it might give them an edge in some situations.

But if I was hiring someone to be my employee, I’d rather them have ability than knowledge.

Is knowledge power? Certainly. Is ability power? Definitely.

The wonderful book Rework mentions this. The authors talk about the accepted and traditional ways of running a business, and they contrast it with how they do it. And these guys are no lightweights – they run 37signals.

They say that when hiring, you should consider what a person can do as being of much more importance than where they got their diploma – if they got one at all. In fact, what the authors of Rework talk about in their book just verifies what I’ve seen for years working in various ecommerce businesses and websites: the best people are usually self-taught hackers.

The university-educated prospects? Sometimes not actually qualified to do the job.

Who do I want to work for me? The guy who knows what he’s doing. Period. I don’t care if he went to an Ivy League school, a community college, or if he even went to college at all – if he has the ability.

This concept also has application in the internet marketing world. I would guess that most self-titled affiliate marketers do little more than absorb knowledge, but actually “do” very little. The forums and members-only sites are full of “tactic-junkies” who are always trying to learn the latest ways to make money online. But I’ll tell you what: practice and just TRYING affiliate marketing on your own will be far better.

Sure, reading a couple of books and hanging out on some forums is O.K. for a total beginner – for a short time. But when you know the basics, you can’t keep hanging around the baby pool. There’s a time to get into the deeper waters and splash around. It’s the only way to really “get it”.

So is knowledge power? In a sense, it is. But only when it’s practical knowledge that’s made the transition to ability.

That is what work is all about for most of us. The company pays you for it’s ability to crush your soul and your personal identity for 8 hours a day while trying to extract as much work as possible from you. You try to get through each day with as much of your soul and identity intact as possible, while doing the minimum amount of work necessary to keep your job and stay out of trouble.

If you are seriously unhappy with your work, you are not alone. About 1 million people call in sick to work each day, and not with a case of the flu. (And that figure doesn’t even begin to consider all the sad, sad emo and goth kids out there.) Job unsatisfaction causes problems for both the employees and employers. Businesses are faced with reduced productivity, absenteeism, and higher employee turnovers. The unhappy employees develop stress-related problems, including depression, TMJ, or desire to shoot up the office with a high-powered automatic firearm. But the fact is that most people will stay miserable with their work situation, even though they actually don’t have to.

It’s important for people (like you, perhaps) to regularly evaluate who they are and what they want out of life and then actively take steps to reach their goals. Most people get busy with the day-to-day of everyday life and their own dreams get put on the back burner indefinitely.

If you hate your job, sit down and figure out why. Is it the type of work that you are unhappy about? Is your supervisor a borderline retard? Are you immersed in meaningless rules that seem to have no purpose? Was the company handbook written by a fascist? If you are unsatisfied with your job or your workplace, then sit down and think about what you can do about it.

There really are only two options for you if you have a soul-sucking job: quit or deal with it.

QUIT THE LAME JOB
1. Analyze what your goals are and work towards those. This may mean staying at your job if you just want to move up or transfer to a different department. Or it could mean staying at what you know is a dead-end job while looking for something better. Or it could just mean quitting and going out and creating something better for yourself.

What would happen if you did quit? Do you have an idea for a business you’ve always wanted to do or a freelance gig you’ve wanted to do full-time? If you (unlike me) are not getting any older and you can waste your life at a meaningless job, then just sit around and stick with the dead-end job until you magically get enough money to support yourself indefinitely – then launch out on your own. [Yes that last sentence was engorged with sarcasm.]

Listen, the truth is if you have any guts at all and you have a dream, you need to set a time to just quit and pursue your dream. If it means scrimping and saving for a year or three months or maybe just quitting tomorrow and living on faith – whatever plan you formulate, you have to commit and DO it. But your dream life sure isn’t gonna come as a result of a dead-end soul-sucking job.

DEAL WITH THE JOB YOU HATE

2. If for some reason you have to stay long-term at a job you hate, then learn to cope and just deal with it – and don’t let your soul shrivel up and die if you can help it. Focus on gaining skills; try to improve and develop positive relationships; encourage teamwork; have a diversion for you in your workspace (a hilarious Dilbert calendar, a wacky little poster of a kitten that’s hangin’ on til’ Friday, rockin’ tunes on your iPod, vodka in your Thermos™, etc.); recognize what you can fix and what you can’t (like how you can’t fix other people and their lazy/psychotic/whiny behavior); reward yourself periodically by doing something for yourself (something special like a trip to Baskin-Robbins or maybe an actual trip on LSD); realize the mantra “this too shall pass;” or (novel idea) get a life outside of work. I hear Ultimate Frisbee is fun.

Whichever path you take, realize that you can’t be passive when it comes to your happiness and career. You can take charge and improve your work situation.

Just don’t do it with a high-powered automatic.

Yet, there are a few things you need to know about The Secret , especially what’s right about it.

First, what is The Secret? The Secret is the “Law of Attraction”. Basically, according to the book, the Law of Attraction governs the universe and since like attracts like, you bring upon yourself whatever kinds of thoughts you are having. If you think positive thoughts, then positive things will happen to you. If you worry about negatives, then you are actually bringing those same negative things upon yourself. It’s an extreme form of the power of positive thinking mixed with a bit of telekinesis. It’s also the same ask-believe-receive teachings on TBN except some of the words have been changed to reach a broader audience: God is now “the Universe”, faith has been replaced with “positive thinking”, and the devil has been morphed into “negative thoughts”. Not surprisingly, The Secret is all about materialism and getting rich quickly. Not only are the claims The Secret makes pure fantasy, the science and psychology in The Secret has major flaws.

The Law of Attraction in The Secret states that EVERYTHING in your life YOU have attracted. So if you constantly worry about cancer, you will bring it upon yourself with all those negative thoughts. It also clearly states that victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought it upon themselves because everything that happens to someone – both good and bad – are the direct result of their own thoughts. This claim is quite preposterous, and yet scary, too, because people believe this and will react foolishly. Some who have fallen for this falsehood have gone out and made big purchases because they have visualized mysterious magical money bestowed upon them from the Universe. Some of the people I know who have gone out and bought this book and even passed it around are normal, seemingly intelligent people. It just goes to show you that 1) People are easily fooled and will believe almost anything and 2) a clever marketing campaign will go a long way, especially if you have the right celebrity endorsements.

The Secret has managed to be right about one thing, though: It is an example of smart marketing. First, the title makes people curious – who wouldn’t want to be privy to an age-old secret that some of the world’s smartest and most influential people, like Plato and Einstein, knew about? The cover, a red wax seal on parchment paper, conjures up mystery and authenticity – a la “Da Vinci Code.” The DVD starts off with a dramatization depicting The Secret being hidden and lost for years before being rediscovered. Then the DVD goes to documentary mode with testimonials, some by semi-famous people. The Secret is presented as if it’s a guaranteed scientific fact and some of the people on the DVD have fancy sounding titles- yet another clever selling technique. And maybe one of the smartest marketing moves is the author’s claim to how she discovered The Secret (in a time of great suffering she stumbled upon it and discovered how many of the world’s most influential used it) and now she just “wants to share The Secret with the world” (at $16.76 for the book and $34.99 for the DVD). And then there’s the ever popular topic that’s an easy seller: getting rich quickly without working. However questionable the claims of The Secret are, it has managed to be a big money-maker thanks to some clever marketing moves.

It wasn’t too long ago when I filled up my tank with $.89-per-gallon gas at RaceTrac in Fort Worth, Texas. Those were the good ol’ days – only about six years ago. In the last six years, the price of gas has gone up considerably – now at around $3.00 per gallon. Take a look at U.S. gas prices over the last six years to see the upward spike that really took off right after Hurricane Katrina.

Now, I can understand catastrophic events causing things like that. But it hasn’t let up. And it’s getting worse.

Take a look at the current U.S. Gas Temperature Map and you’ll see that most people are paying aroung $3.00 per gallon for gasoline. (The lucky ones are paying $2.89 a gallon.)

There’s a lot of debate about why this is happening. Is it simply gas supply-and-demand? Some people think so – but not me. A lot of people are saying things like “Cheney’s lining his pockets” or “Bush wants to make all this money before he leaves office.” Well, I can’t say if they are or aren’t.

But I do see the oil companies getting rich, and I think it’s a simple matter of a snowball effect: they collectively started seeing that they can charge x-amount and we’ll still pay it…and here we are, still paying x-amount+1.

Is this whole thing just fate? Were gas prices destined to eventually rise to this level? No way! This was by design.

What I think is that it’s a simple matter of greedy executives who realized they can rape people. You don’t make record profits by being nice. You know why these fuel companies made record profits? Simply because they decided to charge more. If oil cost them more or if they were paying more to refine oil or if there was some other factor causing the price of gasoline to rise…well, the rising cost to us would offset the rising cost to them. But it’s not.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m all for companies making a profit. No problem there. What I am against is greed, theft, and taking advantage of people who have no way out.

We don’t really have a way out, until someone starts selling a cheap electric car.

But what do we do until then? Not much. But I do have a way you can save money on the gasoline you have to buy anyway. Stay tuned.