5 lessons you can learn from Neil Gaiman’s captivating graduation speech

1) Follow the simple yet time-tested formula for mastering a skill

Ok, here it goes. I am sure you know this formula and it has been repeated so many times in your life that there perhaps is no way you can forget it ever. Since your childhood, you learned it from your parents, teachers, seniors, mentors and all those people who you can remember.

Gaiman told the graduates:

“I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more…”

This is it. Early on in his journey towards becoming the accomplished writer he has become today, Gaiman did not have the skills to produce top-notch works. He was trying to be a writer and he became a better writer by writing more and more and more. The more he practiced, the more progress he made and became a skilful writer over time.

There is no other magical formula that can help you hone your skills in any field.

Think of a musician, filmmaker or sportsman who has always wowed you. You have many times wished that you had been born with the same talent as that person. You have also dreamed of impressing others by showcasing your talent but then you convinced yourself that it is not possible because you do not possess any talent.

This is simply a fallacy. If you dig deep into the life of the successful person you admire, you will undoubtedly discover that he has spent a lot of time practicing what he has excelled in over the years.

Taking a skill to an excellent level requires a lot of practice and some more practice.

At 4:40 during his speech, Gaiman said:

“I learned to write by writing.”

Now, this is a no-brainer. This was actually the first step Neil took to become a writer. He wanted to write and he learned the art of writing by…well, writing.

The same principle applies to any skill you can think of. Do you want to learn how to play a piano? Start playing a piano. Do you want to learn computer programming? Start programming. Do you want to learn how to cook? Start cooking. Do you want to learn how to make a podcast? Start recording the first episode.

Other than practicing, there is no enigmatic formula for learning and mastering a skill.

2) Use ‘secret knowledge’ to your advantage

You are convinced that you have the knowledge and skill in a particular field, and now you want to capitalise on that in a freelance world. You are thinking about ways to do that and you want to get it done ‘somehow’. This is where secret knowledge will come in handy because you can shrewdly use it to achieve what you want to achieve.

The use of secret knowledge is about taking meticulously orchestrated actions that enable you to achieve something by hook or by crook.

As for Gaiman, he used secret knowledge in the beginning of his career to get hired by telling editors that he had previously written for magazines. In other words, he lied but the lie successfully served its purpose and he was recruited.

Gaiman said in his speech:

“In my case I did something which these days would be easy to check, and would get me into a lot of trouble, and when I started out, in those pre-internet days, seemed like a sensible career strategy: when I was asked by editors who I’d written for, I lied. I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely, and I sounded confident, and I got jobs.”

Note how he used the word ‘sensible’. He did not say lying to editors was the best strategy to get jobs. He said the idea of lying seemed to be a sensible career strategy when he started out and was yet to make a name for himself in the world of writing. He wanted writing jobs and he knew he would be able to demonstrate his talent once he was hired. That’s why to achieve what he wanted to achieve, he used secret knowledge as a tool that put him at an advantage.

Utilising secret knowledge is not about resorting to blatant dishonesty. It is more about being aware of where you want to go and being able to find smart ways to reach your goal.

As Gaiman said in his speech:

“Secret knowledge is always good. And it is useful for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people, to enter a freelance world of any kind. I learned it in comics, but it applies to other fields too.”

Can you emulate this strategy of using secret knowledge to reach your goal? In Gaiman’s words, this knowledge is always good. So why should not you use it?

3) EXPECT failures

When you start working on a goal, the thought of achieving success without experiencing failures is a fantasy that will leave you upset along the way instead of making you happy.

Consider success a long train journey and failures are like train stations on the route. The train will stop at the train stations which can be thought of as obstacles and you have to overcome those in order to resume the journey towards the next station. You will not always be able to successfully deal with an obstacle in the first attempt, and this means you will fail. It may take 2 or 3 attempts to cross a station or it may take more. The difference with a real-life train journey is that you do not know the number of stations where the train will stop before reaching the final destination, and you do not know how long the train will stop at each station either.

Every single successful person knows this painful truth. They know failing is an inevitable part of succeeding. Thomas Alva Edison, one of the greatest and most successful inventors in American history, failed 10,000 times in his efforts to invent the light bulb. He later said: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work.”

Not many people are tenacious enough to try 10,000 times for achieving something. But Edison knew it was not about how many times he had failed. It was about how many times he had to try in order to succeed.

In his speech, this is what Gaiman said about failure:

“ When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.”

The next time you start doing something, don’t think of avoiding failures because sooner rather than later, there will be many failures as you proceed.

4) Mistakes are not bad at all

In the academic world where you learn from books and predefined answers, mistakes are always considered untoward and they are to be avoided at all costs. This is because when you are receiving formal education, the measurement of your level of intelligence is inversely proportional to the number of occasions when you make mistakes. In other words, the more mistakes you make, the less intelligent you are thought to be.

However, in real life, mistakes are precious opportunities to learn. The more mistakes you make, the more you actually learn and thus get better in the process.

Gaiman in his speech said making mistakes not only means you are doing something but the mistakes in themselves could be useful. He recalled a mistake he had made in his own life, saying:

“I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought — Coraline looks almost like a real name…”

Moreover, at the end of his speech, to underline how important mistakes are, especially for arts students, he called on the graduates to start making mistakes:

“Now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.”

Do not cling to the belief that mistakes make you stupid because they DO NOT. They actually create avenues to learn something new and make progress.

5) MAKE GOOD ART

This 3-word message was at the heart of Gaiman’s address and it is amazing how aptly he delivered it to the graduates of a fine arts institution. He talked about making good art right after he came up with the example of how mistakes themselves can be useful.

Throughout his address, Gaiman beautifully explained what the life of someone working in the field of arts entails. He prescribed making art as a remedy for dealing with tough times in life, describing the ability to create art as the ultimate lifesaver for him and so many others who he knows.

Gaiman actually got humorous while talking about creating art:

“…When things get tough, this is what you should do.

Make good art.

I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.”

The central idea of making good art is actually doing what you love to do and putting your best efforts in it. Doing what you love gives you the energy and enthusiasm to create something that uniquely represents you.

It does not matter if others think what you have created is terrible. If you put your heart in your creative work that truly reflects what you are capable of as an artist, you will unquestionably create the best art.

This is how Gaiman encouraged the graduates to try to be unique:

“…But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”

Watch Gaiman’s full commencement speech here:

The full text of the speech is available here.