Hi, everyone. I’m Tracy Margieson and I’m the Project Manager of the Arts Well being Collective at Arts Centre Melbourne. And I’m here today to give you a hot tip that will completely revolutionize your to-do lists. That sounds like a big promise, right? Well, it is. But I heard this tip at a conference I was at a couple of weeks ago and I just can’t get it out of my head, so now it’s time for me to put it in your head too. First, I want you to think about the last time that someone thanked you or that you thanked someone for something. Not for passing the salt but real thanks for a meaningful contribution. It could have been verbal or maybe it was a handwritten note because is there anything better than a handwritten note these days? Either way, it feels pretty good, right? Giving and receiving thanks in nearly any way, shape, or form is fantastic.

You might have heard about the health and well being benefits of the concept of gratitude. So gratitude is basically about being thankful for what you have. There’s lots of studies showing the positive psychological effects of gratitude and you might have heard of people keeping gratitude journals and things like that. But let’s get back to our humble to-do list. Often, a to-do list is just this source of overwhelming terror. It’s full of these horrible admin tasks that you don’t wanna actually do, phone calls that you’d rather not make, and then things that you really wanna do but you never seem to be able to find enough time to do them. So I’m going to share this tip with you which will hopefully change the way that you think about your to-do list and it’s going to give you the added bonus of incorporating a moment of gratitude into your everyday busyness.

All you have to do is make one change to your to-do list. At the top, where you’ve scribbled “to do,” I want you to change it to “get to do.” Your get to do lists reminds you of all the super cool things that you get to do as a creative. Get to do invoicing. I get to invoice people who are going to pay me for the amazing creative work that I’ve done. They value my effort and they wanna give me money in exchange for that. How cool is that? Get to do, call the gallery to confirm opening night. Incredible. I’m a practicing artist with an exhibition on the horizon. My 6-year-old self would think I was a total rock star. Get to do, send a press release to the media. Wow, I’m doing something newsworthy. There might be a mention of my show in the newspaper. That clipping is going straight to Grant’s [SP] house. What a privilege.

So here’s what I want you to do this week. Look at your to-do list, pick up your favorite pen and write in beautiful bright colors, “Get to do list.” You have my permission to use glitter glue for this one. I hope you found this hot tip useful. If you’d like to find out more about Arts Centre Melbourne or the Arts Wellbeing Collective, visit www.artswellbeingcollective.com.au. Thank you.