Posted this in 'Lifestyle Questions', but just realized it actually belongs here...
My wife came up with a project that I think is a great example of ERE principles in practice, so I figured I'd share. It all started with her saying that she wanted to have more adventures in 2014. The common approach is to plan a vacation to a new place or something like that. But instead we started brainstorming, and she said she wanted to try something new each month, which led to the idea of taking on a new dare each month, which led to the idea of taking on dares as a result of people pledging money to charity. This led to coming up with the name "Care Dares", and the idea that she would have a blog and twitter feed to describe her experiences to the donators and whoever else.
In thinking about which dares to take on, she made sure they would all have lots of great primary and secondary effects: things like learning new skills, getting out of her comfort zone, connecting with the local community. Now she has over $1000 pledged to charity, a new experience to look forward to and work on each month, great material for writing blog posts, and it all costs very little. I just think it's a great example of using a little creativity to make something incredibly entertaining out of nothing.
Some dares already completely are crashing a bar mitzvah (not easy for a thirty-something asian woman), talked in Shakespearean English for a week (damn annoying). Upcoming are participating in a freestyle rap competition and walking 100 miles starting with no money or food (yikes). Here's her first blog post, which goes into more detail, in case anyone is interested:
http://caredares.wordpress.com/2013/12/ ... dventures/