← ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka
ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka
EP. 374: You Don’t Need One System. You Need 100 with Dani Donovan
01:13:48
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- [00:00]
A
Before we start, a quick note. If you've been listening to this podcast and thinking, I need more than insight, I need support. This is for you. Your ADHD brain is not broken. It just never came with a map. That is why I created your ADHD Brain is a okay Academy. It's my patented step by step framework to help you build a life. And that finally fits how your brain works. Ready to get started? Click the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call with me now. On with the show. Richard Branson, Michael Phelps, Justin Timberlake, James Carville. Wait a minute. Where are the women? Greta Gerwig, Lisa Ling, Audra McDonald, Simone Biles. That sounds like a list of highly successful titans in a variety of industries. They all have adhd, but you don't hear much about that now, do you? You know what else you don't hear about are the 43% of people with ADHD who are in excellent mental health. Why aren't we talking about them and what they are doing? I'm your host, Tracy Adsuka, and that's exactly what we do here. I'm a lawyer, not a doctor, a lifelong student, and now the author of my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. I'm also a certified ADHD coach. And the creator of youf ADHD Brain is aok, a patented system that helps ADHD women just like you get unstuck and fall in love with their brilliant brains. Here we embrace our too muchness and we focus on our strengths. My guests and I credit our ADHD for some of our greatest gifts. And to those who still think they're too much, too impulsive, too scattered, too disorganized, I say no one ever made a difference by being too little. Hello, I am your host, Tracy Otsuka. Thank you so much for joining me here for another episode of ADHD for Smartass Women. You know, my purpose is always to show you who you are and then inspire you to be it. And the thousands of ADHD women that I have had the privilege of meeting, I've never met a one, not one that wasn't truly brilliant at something. And so of course, I am just delighted to introduce you to Danny Donovan. Danny Donovan is an award winning ADHD creator, bestselling author, designer and artist who's honest, fun and uncannily accurate. Comics have helped millions around the world finally see themselves and make sense of their brains. What started as a goofy infographic she threw on Twitter exploded into a global phenomenon. Her first ADHD graphic hit 100 million views in hours and was shared by celebrities like Mindy Kaling. She's the founder and CEO of the Anti boring project, a creative lab flipping productivity advice on its head for neurodivergent thinkers. Her book, fabulous book, by the way. Dani, we're going to talk all about it is called the how to get shit done when you don't feel like it. It isn't a planner at all. It's a toolkit of 100 plus strategies for getting moving when your motivation tank is empty. Her comics don't just make people laugh. They help people get diagnosed and understand themselves and explain invisible ADHD struggles to partners, bosses, and therapists. They've been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, BBC, npr, and more. Dani, welcome. Did I get all of that right?
- [04:12]
B
I was about to say, I'm like, I need to take some notes. This gotta be. This has to be my new bio.
- [04:17]
A
So are you even impressing yourself?
- [04:20]
B
I know. I'm like, dang. All right. When I have a bad day, I'm just gonna come back and listen to this and remind myself a little bit. Cause some of those were like a little while ago. And it's very easy for that, like, recency effect. Cause now when you kind of get in the mode of like, work, work, work, it's, I think, easy to forget some of that stuff. So thank you. Yes, that is me.
- [04:39]
A
Wow. I always like to start with our guest ADHD diagnosis story first. Cause it really helps us connect. So would you mind sharing it with us?
- [04:49]
B
Absolutely. Mine, I think, resonates with a lot of smartass women especially. I didn't get diagnosed until I was a freshman in college, but my parents suspected earlier on. I know a lot of women get missed because they are not outwardly showing symptoms, but I am combined type. And so I have the like Chatty Cathy version of adhd. And so I was getting in trouble a lot at school, getting demerits in Catholic school for not raising my hand, not respecting authority enough, and asking too many questions. And a lot of things like just kind of goofing off and needs to work independently and stop distracting others because I'd finished my work early and want to talk to other people. And so my mom asked my fifth grade teacher or my third grade teacher and fifth grade teacher. I used to only think it was fifth grade. She just corrected me. Third grade and fifth grade teacher, do you think that she could have adhd? And was told she can't have adhd. She's too smart. Mm. And my Fifth grade teacher, I guess too was like, yeah, she's doing well in school. And nobody was really paying attention to the fact that like, I was struggling socially. Like, I'd have a bunch of friends who would really like me and then they'd kind of like get tired of me, start to get annoyed with me. And then suddenly it felt like switch flipped and suddenly my friends all decided I was annoying and now I had to start over. And so that was really challenging. But it wasn't until I got to college. Cause I found out in high school that a lot of the people I hang out with, I suspect, probably had undiagnosed. And so you find your people, you don't feel weird anymore. Went to college and found that I was struggling to take care of myself. Because when your parents aren't there and you lose the structure and it's like I have to feed myself and do laundry and a lot of things that I just wasn't used to doing on top of working on top of school. And I was such a perfectionist, wanting to get good grades that I would just stay up late, right? I'd put everything off to the last minute and then pull all nighters. And it just wasn't sustainable. But I went into a psychiatric, like nurse practitioner to talk about depression because I was having a hard time connecting and making friends, even though I joined a sorority. And I went to talk to her and she heard how fast I was talking and how my tangential thinking between ideas. And she goes, have you talked to anybody about adhd or has anyone talked to you about adhd? And I remember this moment of I don't want to have that because I associate. I've learned obviously since then. But I associated it with like, no, no, no. Everyone I knew who had ADHD growing up were like little boys who didn't have friends. And like, that's what I. That's the negative association I had. And so I was like, no. And she handed me a piece of paper that had the symptoms on it. And I remember reading it and going, oh, no. And she goes, you know what, though? She shared with me that she had ADHD and she didn't have to do that. But it instantly like flipped this switch in my head of this stereotype that I had and was like, oh, well, you were awesome and obviously like successful and cool and not, you know, this vision I had. And so being able to, to know that and that she clocked me because I reminded her of herself. She clocked me because of my communication style. I wasn't even talking about the symptoms yet. She could just hear it in how I talked. And so it's kind of funny and ironic that my first viral comic was about ADHD storytelling and how I tell stories and this, like, roundabout way of a runaway train of thought. And that that was how I got diagnosed, and that is what kind of kicked off my whole ADHD journey.
- [08:31]
A
You weren't struggling in college. It wasn't grades. The struggle was just the personal stuff.
- [08:37]
B
Yeah, it was the. One of the reasons why I struggled to get so much stuff done was because I was putting off stuff to the last minute, pulling goes all nighters, and then was so burnt out all the time because I was neglecting my body needs. And then it really was that, like, adulting part of it. It was the difficulty managing life on top of school. I'm good at school. School has like, here is a rubric. Your deadlines. The laundry doesn't have deadlines. Laundry is like, I could put it off until I have no clean clothes anymore, and now I have to do eight loads of laundry. So I keep associating doing laundry with, like, back pain because I do eight loads at one time and, like, you know, crunched over my bed folding laundry. So now I've got this negative association with laundry because I associate it with how much time it takes because I'm only associating it with doing eight loads of laundry at one time. Right?
- [09:28]
A
Absolutely. You know, a follow up question that I have on the school experience too, that first year. So I don't know. I always associate sororities and ADHD girls with, oh, my gosh, what a prescription. What a prescription for disaster. And so I'm curious what your experience was there, you know, because of all
- [09:50]
B
the stupid rules and I can't speak to other people's Greek life experience. I was in the sorority all four years. And so I found that I had this kind of preconceived notions about what it was gonna be like to be in a sorority, what the type of women who joined sororities were like. And I was. Went through rush because I wanted to, like, meet people. And I was very happy to be wrong about a lot of my stereotypes.
- [10:15]
A
What school were you at?
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B
I was at the University of Nebraska, Kearney. And so I was an alpha fee. And I found that the girls that I was connecting with just like nerds, just like me, you know, and so when we'd have, like, snow days and everybody would pull their mattresses down off their. Off the bunk beds and we'd Have a, you know, Harry Potter movie marathon kind of thing. And so it was really just a fun way to connect with people. But I found at first that I was really struggling. And I will say, though, my best friends who ended up being my best friends in college were not in my sorority for the most part. Like, they were in my art program, because that's also where I spent in the art building, is where I spent all of my time. But I. And I found that it took a while for me to find the people, I think, in my sorority who were kind of more on my wavelength. Because it's one thing to connect with people, and it's another thing to have a best friend. And so I found that I was connecting with people, but I wasn't having that level of like, oh, my God, I want to sit down and know every single thing about you, and let's stay up till 5am talking about, you know, what we were like as kids or what have you. So I really found, though, that the thing that connected me at first especially was that I was always like an extracurriculars kid, right? I am very, very privileged to have been able to try a bunch of different things. I joined a bunch of clubs in high school just to, like, try on little club hats and figure out what I liked, what I didn't like. And a lot of times it was to design the T shirts, because I've been a graphic designer. I've known I wanted to be a graphic designer since I was in middle school, since I found out what graphic design, and I wanted to design T shirts. So I joined these clubs, designed the T shirts, and then, like, quit the clubs. And in college when I was doing rush, I found out how many events they did and that they designed their own stuff. I'm like, oh, my God, I can design so many T shirts. Sororities make so many T shirts. And so I had just this portfolio of T shirts. I was, like, director of, like, you know, marketing and social, doing, like, social media stuff. So it was really an opportunity for me to get to flex skills that I enjoyed doing for causes, for philanthropy, events, stuff like that. Because I think a lot of people also don't realize how much philanthropy is involved in being in Greek life.
- [12:43]
A
So then what you're saying is the sorority was not part of your angst at all. That was actually a good thing.
- [12:49]
B
It was truly the. All of the things that I've gotten here in the anti planner about how to clean out your fridge and how to get yourself to answer to you Know, messages and emails and the things that I struggled with in college, I do still struggle with. But I didn't have any kind of, like, support. And I will say that I. This kind of second part of my diagnosis journey was I started getting meds and meds were, like, life changing for me. They are not. They are not for everyone, but they are for me. And they work.
- [13:19]
A
They work.
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B
When they work, they work and they worked for me. And it was like getting glasses rigged. Oh, my God. I could have been like this the whole time. Because now I can actually kind of make the space to focus on things that aren't interesting. Because when I'm engaged, I will, like, lock in. When I'm not engaged, I will get distracted at the drop of a hat. And this helped me to be able to not get distracted by things I wasn't interested in. And that was really where it was, was I could stay focused on things that I didn't really care about. And so being able to have that and have meds was one part. But I was on meds from, you know, my, my freshman year of college until I was what, like 26, I think. And I. But I wasn't in therapy and I wasn't talking to anybody about it. I was just taking meds. And I didn't really understand myself differently. I didn't tell anyone I had adhd. It was just this sort of like, background thing that I knew I took meds for because the meds helped. And I started talking to a, who I thought was a talk therapist, but she was just actually like a. Another, like, psychiatric nurse practitioner who let me have 60 minute appointments. And then I brought in a workbook. I'm like, hey, I think I want to, like, work on this stuff. And she goes, do you want to get a talk therapist? I'm like, are you not a talk therapist? And so she mentioned going. She's like, maybe you can find some resources online. And I stumbled across Jessica McCabe's how to ADHD YouTube channel. And I was watching her videos and I was bawling. She had one on laundry and on showering. And I was just like, oh, my God, this is why this stuff is hard. Because I had only associated my ADHD with work and school. I had never put together that. I have a hard time with hygiene and brushing my teeth because of adhd. I had never put together that. These things that made me feel like I was. I'm using heavy air quotes on, like, I was a bad woman, like a bad adult, like, not showering Right. Like, my hair being greasy was this big thing that I felt like I didn't care about my appearance as much as I was, like, supposed to or something like that. And the truth was I'm like, showering is boring and feels like a waste of time. It feels optional. I have so much other stuff I could be doing. And I now understood this other little final puzzle piece that finally clicked, which was, oh, things that aren't interesting are extra super hard. And so it's really funny now because Jessica's one of my best friends at this point and we went to Italy together. We have so much fun before.
- [15:52]
A
Before you figured out that, oh my gosh, this whole part is also adhd. You know, life stuff, life skills. Did you know anyone else with ADHD or were you just totally private about it and wouldn't say anything to anyone?
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B
That is 100% what happened is I had never talked to anyone about it who was not a clinician. I didn't talk about it really with my family. I never mentioned how. I never thought about how it impacted my life. I never whenever something hard, whenever I was having a hard time with something, no part of me clicked, like with, oh, maybe this is hard because of my adhd. I did not have this zoomed out self awareness of being able to separate myself from my struggle because it all felt like a character defect, it felt like a flaw. It felt like I was being lazy. Even though I had an ADHD diagnosis, I had not yet internalized that my brain, you know, when I say like disorder, disordered means, you know, for me, at least for adhd, is I want to do something and I can't get myself to do it, no matter how bad I want it or I don't want to be doing something. And I can't get myself to stop, even though I want to stop. And so this, what feels like a lack of control, what feels like I'm not in the driver's seat of my own life. Even though I want this so badly, I must not want it bad enough or else I'd be doing it right. And so that's really where that sense of choice, because there were occasionally times where I got myself hyped up enough, but I was using that self shame in order to motivate. I was using this like I have to be mean to myself in order to get myself to be because other people shaming me or being mean to me was motivating. And this is the only way I know how. And so finding that motivation outside of being mean and finding that those means of self forgiveness and that the struggle is not your fault. The struggle is because your brain is wired differently and you might not have the support that you need to succeed.
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A
And every ADHD brain is also different. Right. So some of us don't struggle with any of those kinds of more hygiene type things because that is so important to us. So I am really curious, okay. When you were like a teenager or in college and you liked a guy, did that help?
- [18:16]
B
Yes. Yes. Yeah, that was a big, you know, thing. It's like, oh, shaving your legs is optional and until it's not. And so there really was this sort of like what my brain labels as optional sort of thing. And so much of it was like if I am like work mode, focus mode. Like I went my first few years of college where it just, it was not a priority. Like dating was not a priority for me because I cared so much about my, about my design program. And so it was one where yet. But that motivation was still driven by other people and the shame of someone else and what they might think of me.
- [18:56]
A
You're absolutely right. Yeah. And I want him to like me. Right. So this is what I need to do. So you're telling your story. You must have felt different than other people, than your friends, because your friends probably were focusing on all that crap.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Instead of focusing on what you were focusing on, which frankly is what moves your life forward. Right.
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B
Yeah. School and work and career and. Well, because I found my passion super early.
- [19:23]
A
Well, and that's incredible that you have always done what you've loved, just, you know, various permutations of it. So I want to know, when you graduated from college, you were, I'm assuming like a graphic design design major.
- [19:36]
B
Yeah, visual. Visual communication and design.
- [19:39]
A
Okay, so what did you do? What was your first job?
- [19:43]
B
I was senior in college and was working an art director job on top of 15 credit hours of classes. Of course you were what overwhelmed me. I was the art director for a, actually for a weight, for a weight loss company. It was very focused on. It wasn't like, hey, eat this food, restrict yourself from this food. It was, it was like, here's eat 25 grams of fiber a day, drink eight glasses of water, work out for 30 minutes and count your. Just write down what you're eating. So it was like, didn't feel like a lot of these kind of other companies felt to me. But I got. It was a small company and I graduated from school, you know, went to doing it full time and they did not need a full time graphic designer for how much work they actually had. And I was doing a lot of templated stuff. I was kind of doing everything I loved wearing all the different hats. But I was late to work one time because I. My kit. I had a kitten die that I had just got. Yeah, it was really, it was really traumatic. I'd been crying a bunch. I'd stayed up really late and I overslept and I came into work at like 10:30 instead of 8. I did not miss any meetings. There was not anything important. And I'd worked for this guy for two years and there was a. Well, I'm going to have to think about this because, you know, you need to go home because I need to know that I can trust you.
- [20:59]
A
And you had explained to him that your kitten died.
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B
Oh, yes. Yeah. Later in life I have realized he was looking for a reason to be able to make because then he goes, I could either fire you or you could quit and I'll write you a really great recommendation letter. Which turns out the I don't want to pay unemployment like side of things. I found that out later. But this, this, you are the reason why this happened. You are to blame. Because then I knew it wasn't about that because then he brought me back on and said, I'll pay you $15 an hour to do freelance work. Which is should have been again, a little, little ding, ding, ding, a red flag. But I, I felt like it was my fault. Being on time was actually the hardest part for me with jobs was, was being awake in the morning.
- [21:43]
A
You'd never been late.
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B
Yes.
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A
Yeah, that was the first time after two years.
- [21:48]
B
Yeah. So it was. Yeah, well, when I was in school, it was like I made my own, made much more my own hours. But it was, it was really difficult because getting up early was really a struggle for me. So graphic design positions. Later on, my last job before I transitioned into, you know, working for myself full time, I worked as a graphic designer at Gallup, which I loved because I got to. Yeah, yeah. And they did CliftonStrengths too. And so they did strengths based learning for like companies I got to design for. You know, they do different brands. So you get to design stuff in different branding for, you know, we had clients like Netflix or National Geographic and Target and stuff like that. So you get to design in different brands. So that novelty factor is there, but you don't have to work for those companies. It was infographics, which definitely impacted the types of comics I started making, which were Charts and infographics, but translating my like kind of art therapy brain into it. But I, a lot of the, the reports I was designing were about like the healthcare crisis in America or you know, different types of things that were very interesting and felt very important. And so the work itself was rewarding. But they were a very like strengths based environment. Right. So they, the way that CliftonStrengths works is different than a personality test where you take it. It tells you this is what you are, you are an ENFP or you are, you know, whatever enneagrams are. What it does is here are 34 like human strengths that we have identified right through scientists. And everybody has these in some form or fashion, but in like a different order. In a different. Yeah, in a different order. And so here's the order of your strengths based on your, on your thing. And I had different strengths than the rest of the people on my team because I had the, I had like 7 out of 10 or influencing themes they have influencing, relationship building, strategic and executing. All of the executing themes were just like at the bottom. But the way that they looked at it as a team was we don't want everybody to have the same stuff. Which took me so long to realize because other people had executing things, they had responsibility and discipline. And I was like, oh my God, I don't have those things. That makes me a bad employee. But then it kind of really realized over time. I wouldn't give up woo, which is like winning others over or communication or activator for discipline. If I had to choose, I wouldn't give it up. But it helped me kind of see those strengths, a lot of strengths in there. And so I actually had my ADHD friends take granted. Now this is not official science. This is definitely impacted by the types of people I'm friends with. But I had 10 different people with ADHD I knew take them. And I had a list, an access list to the top, the order of the most popular strengths, the ones that most people had of all the people who have taken this quiz. And the differences were so interesting because we shared so many of the same strengths and all of us had our executing themes all at the bottom. In a shocking twist, the executive dysfunction people have difficulty with executing themes. But anyway, that was one of the things and the reason I got on this tangent in the first place was because they allowed me to have a flexible schedule so I could come to work at 9:30 and work until 7 and that was completely fine. And nobody was whispering about me, you know, making me Feel like I was inadequate because I needed flexible hours was all it took for me to be able to show up as my best self.
- [25:20]
A
Yeah. So was that the last. The last job that you had before you went out on your own?
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B
Yes. I quit my job to go full time because I had Patreon. I made enough money on Patreon to be able to pay my bills. And I left. It was February. It was the. My last day was like the last day of February 2020. And then like two weeks later was lockdown. And I thought to myself, oh, my God, what did I do? I just left like a job that I loved. And everyone's going to, you know, like, people are going to have money issues. My Patreon is going to go down. And I was so freaked out. But then, like, it worked out. It worked out great. But I. Well, also I was all worried about, you know, oh, I'm gonna be have no co workers, I'm gonna be working from home, and suddenly everyone's working from home. But it was interesting because I don't think that if I had quit right before that happened, I think I would have been too scared to leave. I think that I would have the insecurity of everything that was going on at that time. I don't know how long it would have taken me to. To quit. So in some, in a lot of ways I'm like, you know what? That was actually very good timing.
- [26:30]
A
Oh, my God. It happened for you.
- [26:32]
B
Yes. Yeah. So it was good for the plot.
- [26:35]
A
So let's talk about this planner. Thank you so much for sending these, man. This is a big planner. You've said planners don't fail people with adhd. Planners just weren't designed for them. So I'm curious, what did you see that others in the productivity space were missing?
- [26:53]
B
Planners and to do lists are like static, you know, like a single tool. It is a single tool that has one purpose, which is you to write down the things that you need to do so that you don't forget about them. And like, that's kind of it. It gives no guidance on how to get those things done. It gives no guidance, no validation about any of those things being difficult. And it only provides one solution. And so kind of like stepping back and I initially had started to be like, what am I going to do to make an ADHD friendly planner? And in order to work on this ADHD friendly planner, I was using these weird ways to get things done to like, trick my brain into working on it. And at a certain point, I Sort of like looked over at this pile of weird stuff I was doing and went, well, this is what I'm actually using. Like, maybe this is the answer. And then kind of having this aha moment of oh my God, I don't need one tool. The answer really is having a hundred tools and then realizing that tools are there to solve problems. And everybody says, oh, it's a toolbox. You know, things are a toolbox, but tools are there to solve different types of resistances. And so I really kind of had this moment that was like, okay, if the resistance I'm feeling is perfectionism, and let's pretend that perfectionism is like a screw, right? And someone hands you a hammer or like a planner, you can try to get the screw into the wall with a hammer, but you're not going to have a good time. And the reality is, is if you can find a strategy that like pairs up well and is specifically designed to solve for that problem, it'll make it so much more easy. And so like the way that the anti planner works was, you know, there are, there are these different sections of like stuck and overwhelmed and unmotivated, disorganized and discouraged. And you flip to that section, you know, and stuck, and there's different types of stuck. And you say, okay, I feel perfectionistic. And then go to that section. And my favorite activity that I use time and time and time again is how to half ass it. And it separates things instead of. It's a similar concept as a to do list, but you separate. You've got the project at the top and the components underneath it. And it is must haves and nice to haves. And the must haves are just things that like, this cannot be considered complete without these parts. And everything else goes in the nice to haves for if I have more time and you do just the must haves. And after you've done the must haves, you go, do I want to spend more time on these nice to haves? And sometimes the answer is yes, because I want to make it pretty and I can't help myself. But a lot of times it turns out no. I'm just glad it's done. I don't actually care. I want to go do something else. And it prevents those like, perfectionistic rabbit holes of getting like, ooh, I'm in the design stage, so I'm going to spend six hours making this PowerPoint pretty, even though that's not what actually matter.
- [29:42]
A
Because it's easier, right, Than doing the thing that actually matters.
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B
Yeah. So that's what I kind of mean as far as, like, the tools weren't designed with ADHD brains in mind because they don't address novelty, and they don't address, I would say, shame. So a big thing with the antiplanner is I wanted to make it anti, like, shame proof, failure proof. So you can't. It doesn't expire on December 31st. It's like an evergreen resource so you don't have to worry, you know, wasting money every year on something. I'm just gonna put, quit and feel bad about myself, because that's what we do. Yes. It's like, I am the problem. I spend money, I quit, I suck. You know, that's how I feel.
- [30:17]
A
I didn't even realize until after I understood this and was diagnosed with adhd. But I literally had several planners every year. And you can go through them now. We're in the process of moving after 25 years of raising our kids in this house. And my husband just sent over, you know, a big box full of all. He's like, what is this? They are all planners, and most of them are from the same year. You know, many of them are from the same year. And literally, if you look at it, there's two weeks that are filled out. And he said to me, what do I do with this? Like, two weeks here and two weeks here. And I'm like, just pull the two weeks out.
- [30:55]
B
Yeah. Fill them and send them to Danny as a case study.
- [30:59]
A
And that is what you hear over and over again right from ADHD people. So I found this so interesting because this is not what most people will picture when they hear the word planner. There are no dated pages. There's no Monday through Sunday grid. What grabbed me, though, is there's these tabs. Stuck, overwhelmed, unmotivated, disorganized, discouraged. And you have organized all of this by how your feeling. And that felt really different, and you kind of alluded to it. But can you talk more about that, why you made that decision?
- [31:38]
B
Yes. So I would love to, and thank you for bringing me back on track. So what I actually did was I. I brainstormed a bunch of. So it's activities and challenges and games and exercises and journal proms and coloring pages. And I brainstormed all these things, and I love them. And there's over a hundred. And I was sitting there and I was looking at it, and I'm very big into, like, user experience design. And so I looked at it and I went, if someone handed me a book of 100 strategy of over 100 strategies. I would be so overwhelmed trying to pick something. I would spend so much time trying to look to find something, and it would just waste time. I would not get stuff done. I'd get overwhelmed. How do I organize this? How do people navigate this in a way that's not going to be intimidating? And I kind of started to think, okay, well, why do I procrastinate? Why do I procrastinate? And so I brain dumped onto all the I'm huge on post it notes. Post it notes and note cards are my life. And I just brainstorm on all these different note cards. What is every reason I can think of of how I'm feeling when I procrastinate? And then I took those and I sort of arranged them into, all right, well, which of these mean the same thing? And I can kind of combine those. And then realized as I put them together, they kind of fell into these buckets. And that the, you know, that the overwhelm and resistance are stuck. And overwhelm, like, the tabs are the resistances really. So, like, being stuck is like an inertia problem. And, you know, overwhelm is like, I would say capacity problem. And being unmotivated is like a dead battery problem. And so. But each of those have these different kind of issues within them. And so I ended up accidentally creating an executive dysfunction framework in the same way that the feelings wheel has happy, sad, angry, and then each of those has more complicated feelings and that you can often identify maybe the big core, but it's difficult to identify the specifics unless someone defines them for you. And that's what I accidentally did. Like, it was not on pride, did not sit down and went like, how am I going to map out an emotional framework? And instead just started with, how do I solve this problem of how to navigate which activities to do? And initially it was like, oh, I could do it. Here are the strategies, here are the challenges, here are the this. But I'm like, that doesn't actually help. I want these to help people. And in order for them to help, they have to actually solve whatever problem they've got. And then another issue that I ended up running into, though, by by organizing it this way was what do I do about activities that fit in more than one section, about tools that solve for more than one problem. And so initially I was going to print those activities in each, like, the instructions for each, like, in two different sections or three different sections. But that was like, it's going to take up so much space. Maybe that's not the right solve. And so what I ended up having at the beginning of these different sections that say, you know, here are the contents. And then you might also like. And so it's sort of like a, like a website that gives you recommendations based on these are like the secondary ones. So if these ones in this section aren't working for you, you can still go to these other areas and finds one. You know, find ones that work. And at the bottom it might say pairs well with. And it's got other activities and other pages because some of these, you know, strategies can be combined and remixed into ways that make them interesting and novel again or that make them even more efficient for you. And so I had a really fun time figuring out how to help people navigate their own executive dysfunction in a way that felt like kind of universally relatable. And just starting from what's going to help me, because if it helps me, it's probably going to help other people is kind of where I went.
- [35:34]
A
But you also go in another direction because like you said, it's just this giant toolkit. And what you may relate to and what might work really well for you won't work for me. But I love that it's all set up in, I mean, there's just, you know, the ideas and the different strategies and how much time did this take you to create? I don't even know where you started this.
- [35:58]
B
I did track my time. 3000 hours.
- [36:01]
A
How did you track your time? That does not sound adhd. Let's pause here. Have you spent your whole life being told your way is the wrong way? If you try to use systems designed for a neurotypical brain, of course you'll feel like you're failing. But here's the truth. You were never the problem. You just have a different brain and which means you need different systems. That is exactly why I created the AOK Academy. It's my six step patented framework designed to help you reconnect with your intuition and build systems based on your unique strengths. Let me help you reconnect with your intuition, trust yourself again, and build a life that actually works for you. You've had the answers all along. I'll help you see them. Look, it's time to stop second guessing and start trusting yourself again. Find the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call. Now let's get back to it.
- [37:17]
B
Well, because it was one thing where I was realized though that I, that's what made me realize when I was, I was working like 60 to 80 hour weeks, which I should not have been doing. But it was because I took pre orders. So I did not want to take out money, I did not want to take out a loan. I wanted to kind of test and see. I did beta testing and I took pre orders. Not through Kickstarter, through my own website. So I didn't actually have to like give out any like it was a perks or anything that I could disappoint people with. And I.
- [37:47]
A
And you gave, you gave yourself how much time?
- [37:50]
B
Yes, well, to do it initially I gave myself like six months. And because I already had some stuff working like in the works as I was was putting up pre orders and so I thought I was just gonna be like finalizing it and I opened for pre orders. The day that I did it was I announced it at. When I was giving the closing keynote at the international ADHD like Chad conference in 2021. And so I got to tell everybody about it. Crashed my website felt very cool. But I. Yeah, more than half the attendees at that keynote bought anti planners.
- [38:23]
A
Oh my gosh.
- [38:25]
B
So it was. I felt very, very cool. But then what ended up happening was I was planning on ordering like 500 to a thousand because that's what I had the money for kind of like at the time. And I ended up during the pre order phase, which did last longer than I thought it was going to. I got 40,000 pre orders. And yeah, so then I started to realize, oh my God, this is gonna be big. I have to make this as cool as possible because I don't want to like send out a version that I'm not so proud of and then make a second version and change everything. So I ended up like people were waiting on me, but I'm still a perfectionist who wants to do her best. And so that ended up with me working in a definitely unsustainable, unhealthy, burnt out mode. And the end product is great, but how I got there is not pretty.
- [39:22]
A
How did you do this in six months?
- [39:24]
B
I did not do it in six months. That is the secret is that I. So what ended up happening was there was that Truth or Dare page with lettering that I couldn't figure out. How do I. I don't like how this looks. I'm gonna keep iterating on this till I like how it looks. And then I stumbled into a lettering style that I loved so much and I went, hell yeah, this looks amazing. I But then I looked at the rest of the book and I go, the rest of the Book isn't as good as this, so now I have to redo the rest of the book to match. And I sent out an email and I'm like, hey, everybody, I am really sorry, but, like, I added a bunch of new activities. I, like, upped the illustration quality. I fixed the design on stuff. I made things that look. It looked like a workbook, and I changed it into looking like an illustrated art book. And that, I think, made a huge difference visually. Interesting is what kind of did it for a lot of people, but it didn't used to look like that. So I sent out an email showing the before and afters and apologizing to people. But so many people related to my email. And I told them, I'm gonna send you a activity every other week until the book arrives. And people actually. That secretly was a great idea. Not secretly, but it was a great idea because people told me that they got to interact with Anti Planner Activ. Slow Drip way. And they got used to looking forward to it and they had one activity to try. So when the book arrived, they already knew that they liked it. They already knew some of these activities. They weren't intimidated by it, and they were able to use it. Yes.
- [40:58]
A
Yeah, that's important.
- [40:59]
B
Yeah. So I got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of emails from people who were like, I love you even more now. It's okay. We're, like, willing to wait. I'm so happy that you're just doing this, making this for me. But I feel people saw themselves in me saying, I cannot in good conscience release something I'm not proud of. And I was gonna be proud of it, but now I know I could make it better. So everyone's like, you're never gonna be happy with it. Lies. I look at it and I'm like, I wouldn't change. I wouldn't change. But it took me so long to get to that point.
- [41:32]
A
So how long did it take to actually make it?
- [41:35]
B
Yeah. So I have five different versions of five different iterations of the book that are all post it noted up. They're different. Like, some of them have different. Oh, this one has, like a different cover because I was sending them for proofs. And so you can actually see that I was drawing, like, the avoidance log on here looks like this. And I was like, I want to put a pencil on it. But this is what, you know, it looked kind of like a workbook. And then the one that ends up being in the actual Anti Planner was a different kind of. Of course, as soon as I pick one that is okay than the one in the anti planner. It is still the same. And then so then there's like ones for you to fill out. It's still the same content, but it is presented in a way that does not make it look like a workbook. That page does not look like any other page in the whole thing. So when you flip through it, nothing looks the same. And I think that's what makes workbooks hard is that it looks like homework.
- [42:38]
A
Oh my gosh. Okay, so tell me, how long did this take to create?
- [42:43]
B
So it took 3,000 hours. And that is including the self publishing aspect that went into the backend. But the illustration, design, concepting, writing, editing, that was right around 2000 hours. And so it was really. And 750 of them were that second part. Right.
- [43:07]
A
I need to redo it all because I've got a better idea.
- [43:10]
B
I'm like, I gotta make this a bestseller and I know I'm capable of it kind of thing.
- [43:14]
A
And so was this about a year then?
- [43:16]
B
Yeah, I would say it was. It was about a year and it was difficult because like we moved down like in the very like throes of it. I we moved to Atlanta and we were like shopping for our first house. And like house hunting is stressful enough, but house hunting and trying to finish a book because people are waiting on you. But I will say that the waiting on me part is what got this done. Absolutely is what lit the fire under my butt. And I wanted to make these people proud because they were real. Everyone's like a real person and it's a real number. And the pressure was real. But so was this drive. I had to be like, I cannot stand the idea of taking people's money for a product that they won't use. So everything at the end of the day was how do I eliminate roadblocks, how do I find and spot the friction points of what's gonna make it difficult to use and get rid of those early? Because I have a thing at the beginning that's a page that says re like reply self defeating bullshit. And it's got all of these excuses and all of these fears all in there in quotes of like, I'm just gonna lose it or I never stick with anything or I don't want to mess up the pages because they're too pretty. And I address all of those because then people a feel seen. They are like, oh, you do know how my brain works. Okay, maybe I will give this a shot. But it addresses those concerns because we come in Expecting to fail because so many of us have failed at all of these other things that we've spent money on. And we convince ourselves of this storyline of I am a screw up. Like, I am the problem. And this is just one more thing. It's just a matter of time when in fact, the thing I love about this is that it is like a momentum machine. Because all we need a lot of time is like a little push out the door. Once we get started, we'll keep rolling, picking up and opening the antiplanner. It means that you've made a decision to do something. And making a decision to want to figure out how to do something is the first step. It's not the first step of what it is you're doing. Deciding to do something is the first step. And so even just the. Some people are like, having it on my desk, I don't even need to open it. I feel motivated because I just know that it's there if I need it. And somebody called it like a procrastination. It's been called the bible for procrastinators, but, you know, a productivity spellbook, someone called it. I'm like, ooh, I will be taking that.
- [45:40]
A
Yeah. What's impactful to me is that you don't have to start at the beginning, because I never start anything at the beginning. And you can literally just have it on your desk. And then when you're struggling in a certain area, there's all these options and recommendations and suggestions and information and they're one pagers. Exactly. No, I think it's brilliant, Dani. I know enough as far as aesthetics to know what I really like. And so I'm very picky, but I could never do, do it.
- [46:11]
B
I would say curse with good taste. And so there's this, this like drive inside me to like, yeah, make myself, make myself happy. But it really is a thing that I wanted to self publish. Self publishing is very hard, is actually like very hard if you're not going through like Kindle, like kdp. A lot of self published people go through a couple different avenues where you give all your money to Jeff Bezos to print your book. Yes. And so I wanted to pick gold foil on the COVID I wanted to make it spiral bound. And making it exactly what I wanted means I had to find my own production, you know, and printing, I had to figure out how to do or like have people help me figure out how to do shipping and fulfillment and customer service and like all this stuff. Like I didn't realize I had to like, it was so silly that I didn't fully realize how much work it is to essentially build an e commerce company for one product. But the reality was I didn't. I got offers from some major publishing firms when I was still doing pre orders and I realized though, I'm like, they're going to tell me that I can't do some of this stuff. They're going to make me take stuff out, they're going to make me change things. And I want this to be exactly what I want. I want you to people to open up the page and the first thing they see to be, holy shit, I can't believe I actually finished this.
- [47:29]
A
Unless they have ADHD and or are neurodivergent, I don't think that they would even be capable of editing a book like this because they would not understand.
- [47:38]
B
Yes.
- [47:39]
A
And as I'm sitting here looking at this, I am thinking, well, we've got the manual everywhere for a neurotypical brain. All this is, is the manual for a neurodivergent brain. Right?
- [47:51]
B
Troubleshooting operating system guide.
- [47:54]
A
No, it's you. I'm sure you are. Oh, I can tell how proud you are of this.
- [48:00]
B
It's like a baby, you know, A baby. And so. But the thing that's difficult for me now is I had so much fun making it. But like, it turns out after you have a baby, it like grows up and becomes harder to take care of. Who would have guessed that you have to continue looking out after things after they're born. And so I now we're in this, you know, I'm in the stage of like figuring out how to optimize internal operations of a company that I run and that is not as fun as designing things. So I'm really excited to especially selling things to people when I'm not having organic viral bangers. Because I will say that what made this take off was I was having viral tweets back after back after back to back to back and saying, hey, I don't have a SoundCloud, but if you struggle with this thing that my viral tweet is about, you'll probably like my anti planner. And so that got me a lot of organic reach. Now I'm at the point where I'm doing stuff I don't know how to do. And paid marketing is hard. You know, like getting people to find out about it is hard and it's not as fun. So I'm excited to try to transition into this phase of figuring that out so that I can get back to making more stuff because I'm really. I've got so many ideas. I've got. I've got the anti Planner two plotted out. I just need the time to do it.
- [49:15]
A
Okay, so this is. Goes right into my next question. Perfect segue. So you went viral. You built a physical product, you scaled, and you did not come from a business background, right?
- [49:27]
B
Nope. Graphic design.
- [49:29]
A
What are the things that just really blindsided you?
- [49:32]
B
I am not good at managing people. I love leading when I know what I'm doing. I was like the captain of a lot of stuff. I was president of Art Society. When I feel competent, I am confident. I am on top of it. I. I know how to direct people. When I don't know what I'm doing, I don't. I like, I don't like being wrong. And I, I was a debate kid. But like, most people don't like being wrong. But like, I really don't like confidently being wrong about something. And then, and then somebody being like, I told you so, like people doing I told you so's on me, like, does not sit well. And so I tend to go along with what other people recommend, especially if they put in research. And I haven't done research because I'm busy. And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, like that sounds great. I let a lot of those decisions go because I was like, people told me to delegate. I'm supposed to delegate, right? Everybody tells you to delegate. But I took my hands off the wheel because I didn't like having to drive. And it turned out that a lot of the things that my intuition was telling me, a lot of my gut instincts, even though I don't have a business background, a lot of my gut instincts were serving well with the kind of company that I'm running. But when we kind of switched over into people who had a bit more of a traditional business background trying to run this like a traditional business, it didn't work. And it was really challenging because the stuff that works for other people doesn't really work for this product or this audience. And so being able to find out a managing people when I don't know what I'm doing is difficult because I'm such a people pleaser and I've kind of got these tendencies that I'm sort of figuring out how do I step back into this role where I can feel confident and feel like I can trust my gut even if I don't 100% know something's gonna turn out exactly how I hope it does. So I think that that's really the biggest thing is like learning to get back into my own intuition and learning when to listen to other people and when to, like, push back a little bit more.
- [51:37]
A
I would say I am exactly like you.
- [51:40]
B
I love leading.
- [51:42]
A
I hate managing.
- [51:44]
B
Yes.
- [51:45]
A
But I will tell you, Dani, if you get the right people in there that you really trust, we're still going to screw up. You know, it's just business. That's just what happens. But I have gotten better and better at it where my daughter will overhear me and she'll say, I, mom, you are just so nice. Because I didn't used to be. I used to be very boom, boom, boom. You're so nice. How come you're not like that with our family?
- [52:12]
B
Ouch.
- [52:13]
A
She was joking. But I had never thought of myself as nice. Right. I have always thought of myself as okay, that's the goal. And you know that driveness, that ADHD driveness in the things that I'm interested in.
- [52:27]
B
Yes, yes. You're like, ugh, I have to do finance things. I don't want to do finance things.
- [52:33]
A
And my attitude is just do it. Just figure it out. And then they don't do it the way I would have done it. Right. But that's not fair to them.
- [52:42]
B
The control factor is, is a big thing. And it's especially difficult for me when it's like I am a one woman content creation engine. And so when I have to step over and be doing CEO things and I don't have someone that you know and people, this is the other thing is I'm like the face of the anti planner, my little avatar that looks like me. And my voice, you know, is in parentheses, kind of having like meta commentary, like in my ADHD comments, like, people know me. So getting people to be able to help write captions or make comics or do things that are creative. And because I don't feel authenticity is important to me and having, I don't feel good about anyone pretending to be me. And so now the big content thing that I'm switching over into working on is how do I make anti Planner content that doesn't revolve around just Danny Donovan? Because that makes it so challenging to be able to scale, to be able to post consistently. And so I'm finding now that in addition to the managing and the, the content kind of engine part of it, another part is, is being able to hold other people accountable and hold myself, because I also struggle to hold myself accountable. And I'm like, I feel like I need Someone to be able to set deadlines for me. Because if I set a deadline and tell people to hold them to it, if I don't meet it, what are they going to do? You know, like, so it doesn't feel real. And so being able to manage my own time when technically I am, like, directing the ship, then they think they
- [54:18]
A
can slide because you slid. Right. It's kind of like if you take four days to get back to someone, they're going to start taking four days to get back.
- [54:24]
B
Yes, yes. So that is the biggest thing is to, like, show up as the employee that you want to have. But it's really challenging because it's like. But then also cut yourself some slack, but also don't do it too much or other people will do it. And it's just. It's a hard place to be.
- [54:40]
A
So have you learned so much about yourself and how your brain works through building this planner?
- [54:48]
B
Yes. I did not used to have. It's really easy to, like, think that I always used to have this sort of, like, insight into my, you know, into my own inner world. But the. The reality is, is that, like, I kind of forget that I had. I went to an art therapist two times and I had. I lost my insurance. Insurance. And so I wasn't able to. To go back and. And see her. And then by the time I did get insurance and went back, she had passed away very suddenly from aggressive cancer. So, like, that sucked. But I went and saw her the first time, and we were working on things, and I kept apologizing and she said, why? I said, oh, because I'm talking, like, I'm talking too fast and I'm changing the subject too much and I'm being annoying. And she said, who said, you're being annoying? And it was like everyone and started crying. And she goes, okay, well, let's draw what annoying feels like. And so I drew, you know, this big kind of like bright, spiky, like, orange and yellow ball make and exploding in these, like, waves and all of these little similar circles, like, being looking, like, disrupted. And, you know, there weren't facial expressions on any of them. It was just like a metaphor. And doing that and realizing, how can I take this experience I'm having and translate it visually into something that connects and that feels true. And so it's very interesting because that first kind of exercise into how do I translate thought into meaning, feeling into meaning was such a big kind of step for me in understanding that this is something that I'm good at. And then I remember being in college going, why isn't my major called graphic design? It's called visual communication and design. But now I get it because I learned how to think and how to communicate ideas and not just how to sell more shoes in an advertisement, you know, kind of thing. So being able to transform ideas into something that is easy to understand so that people can like hand it off to people was helpful. And so with the comics, that was one thing. Translating that into the anti planner was so interesting because I had to step into not just what's my ADHD experience feels like and the, and stepping into the why am I procrastinating and what might actually help. So ADHD coaching was like game changing for me. Jesse Chapura has been my coach for forever and now we are dear friends. And she is like the person who really made me step back and go, what is making this hard and what can I do about it? Instead of just like having a pity party, which is what I was doing before.
- [57:30]
A
Yeah, yeah. So do you have a favorite strategy that you use all the time from your book?
- [57:41]
B
Yes. So there's ones that I kind of came up with and then there's ones that are sort of more like strategies that existed before me that I, that I have learned about from elsewhere. I would say that my favorite strategy that I learned about from elsewhere that I do use the most frequency frequently is Kanban boards. So it's I, because I love, love me post it notes because they represent like little ideas. I guess I can have a single thing and I can move them. They're very tactile. But you've got the to do column, you've got an in progress column, a like on hold column and a done column. And it is somewhere that I can see it. I can't put it in a to do list on my computer and forget about it. I can't lose it underneath a notebook. I can't. It's very big and very visual and very tactile and it feels like gratifying to like move things across columns and to see the status of things and to feel like, oh my God, look how many are in the done column. But the best remix that I have kind of put on this is I use my computer monitor as a Kanban board. So along the bottom are all of the to do's. And then on the right side of my monitor I have the post it notes for in progress. The left side of the monitor I have post it notes for on hold. And then when I finish stuff, I put it at the top for done. And what this does is it limits the number of post IT notes. It limits the number of things I can have in my in progress.
- [59:01]
A
Are these actual physical post IT notes.
- [59:04]
B
Physical post IT notes.
- [59:05]
A
Okay, say that again. Because I'm thinking, oh, you're putting them on your computer. And so I'm like, I'm out. But now that you're telling me it's physical post IT notes, which I'm the post IT note queen, tell me again.
- [59:14]
B
I keep all of them as decor. But I. So I have physical post IT notes and I honestly do like label color coding a lot of the time. So if things that are like when I've got a lot of stuff that's like, oh, this is writing and this is illustrating, I might have writing be red or you know, pink post IT notes and illustrating be green. So I'll write with a sharpie what each task is or what each project kind of thing is. And I will put the things that are to do's along the bottom of my computer monitor. So there's a limited number of spots there.
- [59:47]
A
Do you have a 27 inch monitor?
- [59:49]
B
Yes. So only so many can fit there. A 27 is.
- [59:52]
A
Everybody should have a 27 inch monitor if you have ADHD.
- [59:56]
B
Then along when things get started, I move a post it over to the right side of my monitor. So the right side of my monitor is my in progress. And there are only so many that can be in progress at a time. And then if things are on hold, if I'm like waiting to hear back from someone, they go over to the waiting on hold thing which is on the left side of the monitor. And when things are done, I move them to the top so they're sticking like upside down on my monitor. And I will often keep those there for a while because I will just stack those and then I'll have you know, it's like it's got hair that is just made out of to do or done post IT notes. But I found that it's helpful because I can't. It's not behind me, it's not somewhere that I can't see it. It is in the one place, the one direction I am looking every time I'm at my desk. And so I can't forget about it and I can't ignore it and I can't have it again in a digital space that gets minimized or closed out and I forget about it. So like not forgetting about systems is the biggest challenge that I have. And even this, even this System of the Kanban board thing. After a while when it starts to like fizzle and I'm not using it anymore, I take down all the post it notes, I go, I gotta, I gotta do, do a different strategy. And then after, you know, a month, a new project comes up that's got a lot of components and I start doing it again. And I get back on the horse because I don't see it as. I had this one strategy that I need to do forever and ever and when I stop doing it, I am a failure. It's. I'm gonna see how long I can do this. And no, no, deep down, it will not last forever. I have come to terms with that. That is the plan. If the plan is I'm not sticking with things, then when it happens, I'm not surprised when it happens. It was a thing that I knew and I know what to do next, which is to find another thing to try, right?
- [61:42]
A
Absolutely. And I'm not. Sticking to things is not a character flaw. It's curiosity right around. Okay, this isn't working again right now. So I'm going to try something new, but I may come back to it later.
- [61:54]
B
Yeah, exactly. So being able to be someone who. The acceptance, the self acceptance of being consistently inconsistent instead of trying to convince myself, if I find this silver bullet, then I will be neurotypical. Like if I find this thing, then I won't struggle. And if this, then that. And it's not true, it's a lie. There is not one thing that will suddenly make life easier forever and ever. And chasing that idea was hard self harm.
- [62:25]
A
And today you don't wanna be neurotypical, right?
- [62:28]
B
No, no. Now you lean into it and I'm like, oh my God. The reason I was able to make this is because I think differently is because this stuff wasn't working for me. If things were working for me, I wouldn't have to make a whole book about how to trick my brain into
- [62:42]
A
doing stuff and help all of these people. Okay, so your comics have helped a lot of people recognize themselves. Do you ever feel the weight of that?
- [62:54]
B
Yes, there's a lot. I get a lot of emails and a lot of personal stories which I love. Really long personal stories, very long, which I can't fault them for because a lot of times it's like people might feel seen for the first time ever. And I will be honest, like I don't, I can't read all of them. And a lot of them, we are 10. Many of us tend to be oversharers myself included. And. But there's a lot of people out there who have felt so misunderstood for so long. To feel someone understands them is like a gift, is like an actual gift to let that go. And I go, I am giving someone that moment that Jessica McCabe gave me when I watched her video about how ADHD makes showering hard. I am able, and it feels so I'm giving myself goosebumps to be able to know that some people are having that moment, to know that people hit me up and are like, hey, I'm 80 or 79, and I went and got diagnosed with ADHD. I know that it's really late in my life, but it's so nice to have a reason. And I'm so glad that people like you are making things so that others, Other girls who are much, much, much younger will not have to live their entire life wondering why they feel so different. And like, stuff like that just sticks with you. But it is also this weight of being afraid of disappointing people. Even though nobody's ever told me, no one's ever emailed me or like, Dani, you're not putting out content. You are such a disappointment. Where did you go? Everybody is just really nice. When I come back, they're like, oh, I see you on my feet again. That's so nice. And my brain's like, oh, you did notice I was gone. And so being able to know that people are excited to see this content, but to have trust now that since I. Cause I started making this stuff in 2018 and there were not a bunch of ADHD, like, ADHD content creator was, like, not really a thing. There was, like, Jessica, and there were people with podcasts and books, but there weren't, like, comics and, like, memes in the same way that there are now. And so now there are so many other people who are making amazing content who are, you know, professionals talking about it from a scientific perspective, who are making tiktoks about it. There are people who are just talking about their lived experience. There are lots of people making comics. And I don't feel responsible for educating everybody or for relating to everybody in the way that I definitely felt like there were so few of us that we had to go on and being able to sort of pass the torch a little bit so that I can move on to instead of just doing ADHD comics forever, making something no one else was making. And so I'm excited to see where else that leads to.
- [65:43]
A
Well, and if you have a typical ADHD brain, we can only do things for A certain point, you know, certain time, and then that antsiness and okay, there needs to be something more, something better. And I'm assuming you are exactly like that.
- [65:55]
B
My ADHD brain has a idea parking lot that has hundreds of things in it. I have so many products where I'm like, I just wish, you know, that there was some button that you could just push and this stuff can just exist. And unfortunately, that's not how it works. And I now have a better understanding of if you're going to come out with something, you have to plan on what happens if it gets more popular than you thought very quickly, you know, which is a good problem to have, but is a problem because you're building the airplane when you're already in the air.
- [66:26]
A
Well, and if you're all about authenticity and you're all about over delivering, which many of us are, that's stressful.
- [66:33]
B
Yes. Well, now I came out with this. It's got like 4.9 stars. It's, you know, sold now. It's sold over 100,000 copies now.
- [66:39]
A
The bar is here and the bar.
- [66:41]
B
And it's the same thing as my ADHD viral comic where I'm like, wow. But the thing is, is that one got the most views, the most, likes the most, you know, things. And because it was the first and I never had any, this is very good. I've never really stumbled into this line of thinking. So thank you for taking me there, which is that I technically, like, I was a peaked then, right, where that was my biggest. That was my biggest banger. That was. I never hit that level again. But it doesn't matter because consistently putting stuff out there is what made a collection. And that collection as a whole made such a big difference for people instead of just one really amazing new thing. And so that new thing can kind of make way for a new genre of stuff. But being able to make something like the anti planner and thinking I'm never going to be able to live up to this and knowing, well, maybe the point isn't to live, you know, to live up to this. It's different when things have ratings like my com, you know, I don't have like ratings on my comics. I think I in the way that products have ratings. But that, that I did so good. I did so good. I can't let people down. Is very. Runs very deep. So you being like over delivering, I'm like, oh, that is a core part of my personality.
- [67:51]
A
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's never good enough.
- [67:54]
B
Right.
- [67:54]
A
It can always be better. I used to have my poor kids. They were just like, we're so glad you ditched that. My motto used to be, good enough isn't.
- [68:04]
B
Yes. And then in college, my teachers are like, good is great, but done is better. And I'm like, that's easy for you to say. You're gonna give me a D if I don't do great.
- [68:14]
A
Yep. Now it's just frigging get it done, you know, because it's never good enough. It can always be better, but if you don't get it out there, you're never gonna be able to make it better.
- [68:24]
B
So.
- [68:24]
A
Yeah, I can completely relate to that. Okay, last question. Ok. What are the ADHD traits, Dani, that you possess, that you feel are responsible for your success?
- [68:35]
B
Wow. Let's see. I think that my general. And again, I am making a. This is not a thing that's on a diagnosis anywhere. This is my own interpretation of this being a trait that I have from my adhd. So I'm gonna, like, asterisk disclaimer that, like, right up front, which is that questioning that I got in trouble for as a kid of, why is this the way that this is? Why can't. This doesn't make sense to me. This could be better. Why are we doing it this way? And that answer of, because this is how it's always been done. And I'm like, that is not good enough for me. Right. Like, that's not a reason. That's actually. That's like the worst reason.
- [69:17]
A
Opposite. Right. That's why it needs to be redone.
- [69:20]
B
And I'm like, do you not want to come up with something that actually works? Like, this is what frustrated me the most. Jobs where I would come up with an amazing solution. And they're like, well, we don't know for sure if that's going to work, so we're not going to do it.
- [69:31]
A
We're not even going to try that.
- [69:32]
B
This thing we're doing was going to work the first time you did it. But, like, okay, but. But people want to play it safe. And I think that that risk taking. I. I know. I do know that risk taking is an ADHD thing. And so that. Which is hilarious, because there's certain things that I'm like, no, no, no. I'm uncertain. I don't want to. But, like, that intuition that comes from pattern recognition paired with the risk taking of. I feel in my gut that this is gonna work. I don't know how I know, but I know. And kind of pairing those two with the why shouldn't this be different if it's not working is really, I think what led to a lot of my
- [70:10]
A
success and it's interesting as a child it led to all the problems, right?
- [70:15]
B
Oh, 100%. The things that get you in trouble as a kid will make you famous as an adult. I got you.
- [70:20]
A
Absolutely. Absolutely. Just, you know, school system most. Well, we haven't changed in 150 years. Why should we change now? That is exactly why you should change. Dani, you are such a delight. Where can people find you if they want to know more about you?
- [70:36]
B
Where do they buy your beautiful planner, the Anti Planner? So Anti Planner you can get@antiplanner.com and my comics are on adhdd.com that's ADHD with my initials Danny Donovan at the end and then Annie Donovan on TikTok and Blue sky and so D A N I D O N O V A N at all of the places. I haven't been posting a whole lot recently, but I am now figuring out how to get oh, and Anti Planner HQ is the new are the new social media handles for the places where we're gonna actually post Anti Planner content that I am not making all of. So therefore there will be much more than if I am the only one making it.
- [71:21]
A
Wow.
- [71:22]
B
Wow. That's a lot of places to find me. But antiplanner.com is the cool one. Anti-planner or hyphen.com okay.
- [71:32]
A
Anti hyphen planner.com yes, we got it. Finally. Dani, thank you so much for spending time with us here today. It was a delight.
- [71:41]
B
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. This was so much fun.
- [71:45]
A
So that's what I have for you for this week. If you liked this episode with Dani, please let us know by leaving a review. Our goal, it's to change the conversation around adhd, helping as many women as we possibly can learn how their ADHD brains work so that they too may discover their amazing strengths. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you here next week. You've been listening to the ADHD for Smartass Women podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Otsuka. Join us at adhd for smartwomen.com where you can find more information on my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. And my patented you'd ADHD brain is a okay system to help you get unstuck and fall in love with your brilliant brain. Let's pause here. Have you spent your whole life being told your way is the wrong way? If you try to use systems designed for a neurotypical brain. Of course you'll feel like you're failing. But here's the truth. You were never the problem. You just have a different brain, which means you need different systems. That is exactly why I created the A OK Academy. It's my six step patented framework designed to help you reconnect with your intuition and build systems based on your unique strengths. Let me help you reconnect with your intuition, trust yourself again and build a life that actually works for you. You've had the answers all along. I'll help you see them. Look, it's time to stop second guessing and start trusting yourself again. Find the link in the show notes to sign up or book a free discovery call. Now let's get back to it.