Jamie Hyneman Villanova University Commencement Speech, May 16, 2010

On the other end of the spectrum, you can't just go around asking unanswerable questions and waving your arms — you have to go after those answers, make decisions, roll up those sleeves and DO something. Realize you may be making the wrong decision, but take your best shot and go full speed ahead.

At this point things change. Now you need to focus. Your odds of success in things you attempt go up radically if you are methodical and diligent. If you want to have a say in how your lives turn out, you need to be practical about it.

Your classes here at Villanova have all pointed this out, at least indirectly, in that they all had a beginning, middle, and end, and your professors went about delivering their material to you in an orderly way that would make sense to you. Your life should be no different.

I want to emphasize this because I've tried all sorts of things, and I've learned that I can pretty much do anything I've wanted to as long as I was methodical and diligent about it. It may not sound very exciting really, but it works! I've hired scores of people over the years for various businesses, and I can tell you that just being methodical and diligent will get you any job you want and keep you in it if you want it to.

I would not let it stop there either; apply it to your personal lives as well. Most of your lives will be spent outside of work and careers, and so the quality of your lives will be the better for the same reasons. After all, all the greatness you may achieve in your careers doesn't amount to a whole lot if your personal life is a mess.

Lastly, an important point. Since I hopefully have convinced all you graduates to run around playfully asking questions, while being diligent and methodical, there still is more to leading a successful life and more to being a worthy graduate of Villanova.

Of all the things you do in life or all the questions you ponder, I would like you to keep kindness at the top of the list. Are you being kind in all you do? In your professional life? In your family life? In your dealings with others? Are you kind? Shouldn't you be? We owe it to our children, to our children's children, and to all the other things in our world to be kind to them and each other.

There is no question you can ask that will show that this isn't so. So ask those questions, be diligent and be methodical — these traits will all help you progress in the grand adventures you will all face. But to make the adventures all worthwhile, to make your successes truly rewarding ... I ask you to be kind in everything you do, without fail and above all.

Thank you.