Playing Pirates and Ninjas
In 2019, one of our favourite thinkers, Derek Sivers, was asked the question of all questions – "Pirates or ninjas?" – to get his take on the popular internet debate about which group would win in a battle.[1]
True to his ever-divergent thinking form, Derek eschewed a surface-level response and instead riffed on the difference between the two groups. He concluded: "If somebody is a pirate, they get to flaunt their identity", whilst "Ninjas just have to do their job without any social recognition".[2]
Derek's interviewer didn't intend for him to go "so deep" on the question, and Derek didn't intend for us to go "so actor" on his response. But here we are. We both subverted expectations 😎
The players
What Derek pointed to was that pirates and ninjas operated differently.
Pirates wanted to spread their name. Pirates had boats bearing their flag. Pirates sailed the seven seas in motley crews.
Ninjas wanted to carry out the assignment. Ninjas dressed in black and worked at night. Ninjas took to the silent streets solo.
These two modes of operating can be overlaid on the 5 Pillars of Actor Training. The Marketing and Team pillars are textbook pirate. The Skills and Immersion pillars are classic ninja. And both had versions of the "Creation" pillar – although these pillars took opposing forms.
Who to play
If you've jammed at the Dojo for a while now, you'll likely be able to guess our response. In the actor's context, anyway. Although, our response to the surface-level context probably isn't hard to guess either. We are "the Dojo", after all 🥷
As applied to walking the actor's path, there isn't a "right" or "wrong" role. There's only right or wrong for each of us at each point on our journey.
What matters is ye olde awareness, intention, execution cycle. Awareness that there are two distinct modes we can operate in. Intention in choosing the mode that best serves us in the individual seasons of our career. And then execution. 'Coz if the pirate-ninja arch-enemies shared one commonality, it's that they both did stuff. They both took action according to the hat or hood they wore.
So, yes, sometimes it makes most sense for us to play pirate – to go pedal-to-the-metal with marketing and building our team and living big. Other times, it serves us more to double down on our skills, immersion, and keeping our lives relatively contained.
Ultimately, we're actors. We are capable of playing both pirates and ninjas, but we shoot / stab / ninja star ourselves in the foot when we aren't in alignment with the role we're playing. That is, when we're meaning to play ninja but we're acting like a pirate, or vice versa.
Honour whatever role you need to play in this moment. Unlike actual pirates and ninjas, you can switch hats / hoods whenever you want or need to.
Thoughts / feedback / challenges? We'd genuinely love to hear.
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