Neil Gaiman who is best known for penning the comic books "The Sandman" and "Coraline" gave a touching speech during last week's graduation ceremony at Philadelphia's University of Arts. Since then, his speech has gone viral and has been viewed 67,000 times. Tim Ferriss, the author of 4-Hour Week, called it the best commencement speech he's ever heard. What made the speech so great--the frankness about his life and career, which resulted not from following convention or a even college education but by following his intuition. The advice he dished out to the students that day and now to the world came in six succinct points. But the sweet spot is really in the details so if you feel like being inspired, watch the video or read the full transcript below.
For on-the-fly inspiration, here are his 6 points:
1) When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing (And that's okay!)
2) If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that.
3) When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive.
4) I hope you'll make mistakes. If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something.
5) While you are at it, make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do.
6) People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today's world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time.
And the video