The Choosing Game

This is a game I designed for brainstorming ideas when you and a friend are trying to decide what to do with the time you have together.

Equipment needed

• A few sheets of blank or lined paper (this is a good use for scrap paper)
• Two pens or pencils

Directions

1. Tear up one of the sheets of paper into 8 (or more) small equally-sized pieces.
2. Give half of these small pieces of paper (we will call them tabs) to each person
3. Without sharing them, both “players” write down ideas for what they would like to do: one per tab.
4. When both players have completed step #3, read out loud all ideas. If both players have written the same idea, it is now considered to be one idea, one choice.
5. Using another two sheets of paper, both players make lists of all ideas.
6. Without sharing, both players rank the ideas from 1 – 8 (this number will be lower if any of the ideas were duplicates) with the favorite idea receiving the most points.
7. Both players share their ratings with one player recording the results and adding up the points for each item.
8. Have fun engaging in the activity that earned the most points! *

* This last step is a suggestion: what the players decide to do with the results of this game is up to their combined inspiration.

Variations (created by my friend Alex)

1. Rather than writing the ideas in a list, you may simply order them using the little pieces of paper. To facilitate this, both players begin by writing out two sets of tabs of their ideas. After reading the ideas out loud (and discarding duplicate tabs as needed), the players give each other a full set of their idea tabs. Out of sight of each other, the players order the tabs and then write their rankings directly on the tabs themselves. Steps #7 and 8 would remain the same with the total points being recorded on one (or both) set(s) of tabs.
2. The players write their ideas on both sides of their sets of idea tabs. When it is time to rank the ideas, the players would take turns with one player writing her scores on one side of the tabs and then handing the set of tabs to the other player who would then write his scores on the other side.