What March Swagness has taught me about saving money

Swagbucks is having an earning challenge called March Swagness. It started on March 20 and runs through April 2. Each day, Swagbucks sets a goal for you to earn Swag Bucks. If you meet the goal, you'll get a 10% bonus. That bonus will be doubled if you meet the goal every day of the challenge.

As I've participated in the challenge, I've thought about how this challenge relates to saving money. Here's what I've learned:

You need to set concrete goals. I've never had a goal to earn a certain number of Swag Bucks per day, so I just earned them when I felt like it and ignored Swagbucks when I didn't feel like doing it. But with a goal, I've focused on earning those Swag Bucks each day. Similarly, if you want to save money but don't set a goal, you might work on it some of the time but not at other times.
You need challenging goals. The first day of March Swagness, the goal was 50 Swag Bucks. That wasn't too difficult; by just doing a few searches with the toolbar and watching a few videos, I was able to hit the goal. But the next day, it was 80 Swag Bucks. I realized just doing some searches and videos here and there wasn't going to get me to that goal. Similarly, if you set a goal to save a few bucks a week, you won't work as hard as if you make your savings goal larger.
But goals shouldn't be ridiculous. Had Swagbucks set their first goal incredibly high, most of the Swagbucks users wouldn't have even tried. So don't set a goal to save 50% of your take-home pay the first month. Instead, start with a small but still challenging goal; then as you meet your goals, increase them bit by bit.
You need to be creative in meeting your goal. To meet the first goal of 50 Swag Bucks, I didn't do anything I wasn't already doing. But to get to 80 Swag Bucks in a single day, I had to get creative. I have an Android phone (a chink in my frugal armor, I know), and I had tried Swagbucks TV on the Android phone when it first came out, but it didn't seem to work for me, so I stopped trying. So for this challenge, I tried it again - and it's working well for me now and helping me earn more Swag Bucks. So in terms of saving money, there may be methods you've tried in the past and rejected. Maybe you tried couponing and decided it was too much work for you. Give it another try! With all the online coupons and coupon matchup blogs, couponing couldn't be much easier than it is now.
Small rewards work wonders. The bonus for meeting the March Swagness goal is only 10% of the goal amount. That's a pretty small reward, but without it, many Swagbucks users wouldn't participate. So when you've met a money-saving goal, give yourself a small reward. That will motivate you to meet your next, more challenging goal.