Art or sport? How to decide

I feel perplexed when a decision comes my way. I don’t trust myself. Should I go to the world’s biggest arts event or the world’s biggest sporting event? All the madness and creative splendour of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, or the passionate celebration of athleticism that is 30^th Olympiad? I wasn’t even meant to be here for the Olympics but chance has brought me here, so is that a sign? Is it going to be the Olympics or the Fringe this summer?

When it comes to complex decisions like this I don’t just follow my gut or go with my head, I use a thorough problem-solving method by Edward De Bono called the Six Thinking Hats Method to accurately discover what the correct course of action is. This way, I’m always assured that I’ve exhausted every option available to me and hopefully discovered the correct way, not only to make decisions, but to do everything in my life, from decisions about whether to be buried or cremated right through to standing or sitting at the toilet.

Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats Method is a metacognitive way of compartmentalizing a problem into different thinking hats. Each hat is coloured differently to correspond to different ways of thinking. The Blue Hat is worn to set out the parameters for a discussion, then the White Hat is used to discuss the statistics and data associated with the problem. Next, there is the Yellow Hat of speculative creativity otherwise known as millinery Prozac, and the Green Hat of creative thinking. There is the Red Hat of emotional thinking, or ‘gut’ instincts, and finally there is the Black Hat of critical thinking and decision-making.

The statistics surrounding both the Fringe and the Olympics are immense. Last year the Fringe sold over 1 million tickets to shows and the average ticket price was £9, compared to the average ticket price for an Olympic event being £40. So, financially, the Fringe is a better investment and I can see 4 shows for the price of one event, although if I buy a ticket to the marathon then I’ll be getting better value as the event goes for over 24 hours compared to the 4 hours I’ll be getting at the Fringe.

Asher Treleaven’s show Troubadour will run 1-26, 16.30pm, at Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh Festival

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  Is it Art or Science or Sport?
  It’s getting harder to tell the difference. Good, the barriers between the three major expressions of human amazingness have been too high for centuries.