Julie Legg speaks with Dani Donovan, CEO/founder of The Anti-Boring Project. Dani is known worldwide for her ADHD comic illustrations.
Dani is a graphic designer, content creator, public speaker and now author of ‘The Anti-Planner: How to get sh*t done when you don’t feel like it’ that deals with procrastination and all the emotions that hinder us from doing those projects and chores that don’t excite us.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Being diagnosed with ADHD in freshman year in the United States.
- The role ADHD plays in the way that we communicate.
- Dani Donovan’s backstory that led her to creating ADHD comics and info-graphics and how her Storytelling comic reached 100 million views.
- Public speaking about a variety of ADHD related challenges including, the social penetration theory, accommodating executive dysfunction, ADHD in the workplace.
- Over-compensations we make for our ADHD when undiagnosed, and after diagnosis
- The Anti-Planner: ways to over-come executive dysfunction and ADHD ‘road blocks’ in order to complete chores or tasks.
Key takeaways:
- There is a need to bridge the gap between the clinical knowledge and the lived experienced with ADHD.
- Having ADHD can be compared to being a sprinter rather than a marathon runner.
- Taking ADHD medication will help, but you need still need drive and determination to complete tasks (they don’t do them on their own).
- Strategies may look good on paper, but unless one overcomes the challenges/emotions such as procrastination, they won’t be put into practice.
- Bosses who understand ADHD are going to have a lasting impact on the daily life of employees with ADHD
Links:
- ADHDD.com
- The Anti-Planner
- Dani Donovan’s Instagram
- Julie is the author of THE MISSING PIECE: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD (Harper Collins, 2024):
Transcript:
JULIE: I’m Julie Legg author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52. Welcome to ADHDifference. In this episode I’ll be speaking with Dani Donovan, founder and CEO of The Anti-Boring Project. Her work empowers individuals with ADHD to understand themselves and better communicate some of the struggles that they have with their loved ones. She is well known worldwide for her ADHD comics and her works have been published in the likes of the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, on BBC News and also featured in my book The Missing Piece. Dani is a public speaker and an ADHD author in her own right. She’s written and published The Anti-Planner how to get [ __ ] done when you don’t feel like it. Yes, it’s all about procrastination and there’s some very creative strategies in there to help. Well, I’m delighted to have Dani Donovan in today. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat.
DANI: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
JULIE: Great. Well, you are known worldwide of course for your ADHD comics and we will go into that in great detail, but you have ADHD yourself and I was wondering if you/we could start off by you sharing a bit more about that. What age you were diagnosed and what lead you to that diagnosis?
DANI: So, I actually didn’t get diagnosed until my freshman year of college but my mom had asked my … I knew it was my third-grade or my fifth-grade teacher I just found out too, though I think she also asked my third sorry third-grade teacher … so third-grade teacher and fifth-grade teacher if I could have ADHD. And my third-grade teacher said “Well she’s not having a hard, you know, having a hard time in school. She’s getting fine grades. Like I think that she’s fine.” And then my fifth-grade teacher when my mom asked again had said “She can’t have ADHD. She’s too smart.” So that like leans right into that, I would say, stereotype of what someone with ADHD, especially girls with ADHD, look like. And then I … but I went to college and you know I’ve been getting great grades, and been getting great grades, went to college and had, you know, 8: a.m. classes and no parents, no parent structure there to make sure that I was taking care of myself. So, like I was getting to class. I was getting my homework done but the self-care was really challenging. And the feeding myself and the car maintenance, that I didn’t realize that my dad was getting my oil changed, you know. Like I had … there were some privilege-based things that I just hadn’t had to take care of on my own. And then there were just some like truly just executive dysfunction related things, and I was having a hard time feeling like I was struggling to make friends, again. And I’d moved to a different city, went to see someone about depression, and she heard through my conversation with her that, you know, I was changing topics constantly and like kept apologizing and she asked me, she goes “Does anyone talk to you about ADHD?” and the … I said “What? No.” and I had that like kind of internal flare up of like everyone I know with ADHD is like. I hate saying it now but you know like an annoying … I remember like annoying boys with no friends. That was the association that I had and I was like “I don’t, I don’t want that. I don’t want that,” and then she handed me just a sheet of paper with like the list of the symptoms on it and I read it and I was like “Oh no, okay.” And then was able to, yeah, get started with treatment. And started on meds and, you know, you take them and I was getting some help, and it was just like “Oh I could have been like this the whole time.” So being able to have that moment … but again, it was so by chance but I didn’t go in seeking a diagnosis. I didn’t know about, you know, my mom having asked my school teachers. I was obviously uninformed about the condition itself. And when I said “I didn’t want to have it,” the nurse …. the psychiatric nurse practitioner disclosed to me that she actually had ADHD and so she recognized herself in me through how I was talking and through my communication style. Which is so funny because my ADHD storytelling comic was like what, you know, kind of my first comic. It kind of kicked everything off. But the role that ADHD can play in the way that we communicate you know through, difficulty prioritizing and staying focused and stuff like that. I think that that’s a really under-looked symptom of ADHD, not a symptom but was a quirk of ADHD, and I feel very grateful that she caught it.
JULIE: That’s amazing and wonderful for you that it was picked up on relatively early and so, armed with that knowledge and a new understanding of yourself, to then to be able to progress your life from that point, with the knowledge that you may need some tools, or as you said you, you have medication which is one of the many tools I guess that have taken you through to the next step. And I must talk about your amazing comics. Now how did that come about? I know the subject matter is, it’s just so beautifully honest and resonates with so many, were you always an artist? Was this a natural progression post-diagnosis? Or how did that come about?
DANI: So, I have wanted to be an artist like since I remember wanting to be anything. I have always had that as my creative expression and writing and drawing were always kind of my favorite things. And when I was younger, starting like yeah, I think third-grade, I wanted to be a cartoonist for the Sunday Funnies. Remember this? I … in New Zealand, but the … if you guys have the Sunday Funnies were in the newspaper? There’s like comic strips, yeah and so I loved those. I grew up with like Calvin and Hobbes, you know. Reading, reading, reading, and just developing a sense of how much I loved humor being injected with art. At a very young age and I was like making my own like little comics and then I kind of dropped off from that in seventh grade when I found out about graphic design, and I had this like really mind-blowing moment of realizing that someone designed every single like thing I could see was made by a person. And I remember having that that moment and being like “That’s what I want to do,” and I picked it and I just genuinely like stuck with it, which is one of the very few things in my life that I picked and then didn’t quit. And so graphic design really was my path, my career path, and I ended up at, as a graphic designer for Gallup, who does like the polls, and the Gallup poll, and Clifton Strengths and stuff like that. And I had just started at this job and was talking with a few of my co-workers about therapy, because someone had brought up what they were talking about in therapy. I’m like “This is a thing, that we can just talk about?” because I’ve had friends who are also in therapy and none of … we’ve never talked about what we talk about in therapy. And so it became this really like safe space where I then was like, alright I’m going to open up that I have ADHD, because I’ve never told co-workers before. I’ve only ever told bosses and typically, when I was getting in trouble and I had to disclose right. And I opened up, and told them I had ADHD, and everyone, no one was surprised. And doing so without this fear of judgment like they were going to treat me differently, or think less of me, I was able to sort of joke about my symptoms in a way that made for some really interesting inside jokes. So, the long and short of my first comic was that I/we had an inside joke that the conductor for my train of thoughts, his name was Donny Danovan. He was like really bad at his job and wanted to take all these detours to like make sure you don’t miss out on like any cool sites on the way there. And I thought to myself, what if I could draw what Donny’s like journey looked like from the, you know, start of story to the end of story. And I ended up making this this storytelling graphic that shows the, you know, convoluted ways in which we communicate. And I showed it to my coworker and she goes “That’s amazing. This is just like you!” I’m like, yeah, I made it! And I wasn’t going to post it anywhere because I had not told/ disclosed to my boss that I had ADHD yet and he followed me on Instagram. And she’s like “Well you could just post it on Twitter because you don’t have a big following or anything so nobody will probably see it.” And then Aaron Brooke, who’s you know, made a lot of great ADHD content over the years, retweeted it and it just hit the exact right like niche audience at the exact time where there weren’t really any, there wasn’t anyone making specifically ADHD comics at the time. And it really like blew up. And I was reading the comments and seeing how many people were crying because that after, end of story on the ADHD side, it says ‘apologize’. And so many people were coming to the realization of like how guilty they felt, and how much they felt the need to say sorry for taking up space, for taking up time and space, because we’re, you know, maybe used to people getting annoyed at us for taking too long to get to the point. And so realizing how many people were affected, and how many people felt themselves seen and were able to share this piece of content with their loved ones to be like “Look it’s not just me.” Or people seeing the loved ones and being like “Oh, is this an ADHD thing?” and it really lit this fire under my butt to make more of them, to do this sort of like public art therapy, self expression, that ended up not just with comics but with infographics. Because when I was at at Gallup designing, I think that really truly … me being at Gallup and being a designer who I’m working in tables, and charts, and bar charts, and all kinds of data, and I combined that like data, visualization, infographic mentality with the working through an education of ADHD I was kind of doing it myself. That was a very long answer and about how I tell long stories so I’m not …
JULIE: No, no. I love it. And I thought it was interesting you noted about the apology. The “I’m sorry.” I also used to do that particularly as a teenager. I used to almost apologize in advance for everything. And, you know, it’s … “Breakfast is ready,” calls my mother and my response is “I’m sorry.” If I pre-apologize people are less likely to get mad at me. We’re pre-apologizing. Yes, yes, yes. Either she’d asked me 10 times before and I hadn’t noticed, or there must be some reason, so I’ll just say sorry. And to the point that, you know, years later she’d just say “Just stop saying sorry,” and I went “Oh sorry!” which is crazy. Anyway, I’ve grown out of that slightly with … armed with more knowledge. But one of your ADHD storytelling comic itself, 100 million views? Did I read that right?
DANI: Yes. That, wow. And I didn’t put a watermark on it!
JULIE: That is outrageous and if that didn’t give you the encouragement to keep going, what would. That’s brilliant. Now your work has featured in many big media outlets too. We’ve got the New York Times, and The Guardian, my book [The Missing Piece: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD]!
DANI: Yes. Thank you. The highest highest honor of all.
JULIE: Huge! Yeah, no, but it’s wonderful to see it out there and I think people will certainly recognize your style, if not your name, absolutely everywhere. But you’re not only an illustrator you’re also a public speaker too. Can you share more about what you do in that space?
DANI: I would love to. I really enjoy public speaking, which is one of those things that I know a lot of people have a bunch of kind of fear surrounding, but I was a theater kid. I loved being in plays. I was on debate team and there’s something about … and I loved like having the PowerPoint in class that like the teacher asked if they could, you know, keep, kind of a thing. And so I’ve always really enjoyed presenting stuff. Especially presenting information and I think that that goes back to my, you know, the comics, and the data visualization of like how to package, design and present information in a way that is clearly digestible for people matters a lot. And so for the public speaking I started off my I would say public speaking journey at the Microsoft Center with a talk that I wrote called The Art of Self-Disclosure, how I became an ADHD influencer overnight. And I talk about the psychology of opening up and through like Social Penetration Theory, how we decide the basic information, or likes and dislikes, or like beliefs and things of how we communicate with each other. And then in the middle there’s this like shame area right, this like deep dark core of that maybe you touch on in therapy, or talk about your best friends with, but most people don’t know, don’t see that side of you. And so I think that really is truly one of the reasons why my comics hit people so hard is because it’s … they see themselves. They see someone expressing this dark, deep dark part, the things that they’re ashamed of, the things they don’t like about themselves, and they can feel this sense of like catharsis. And so I love … that’s kind of where I started and I really loved talking about that. But it turned into, then my next speaking gig ended up for Adobe and I made one for ‘Designing for the ADHD Brain’, understanding and accommodating executive dysfunction. So I got to use my graphic design knowledge and pair that with case studies of “Here are some digital products that are doing a really great job of accommodating certain ADHD symptoms. And here are the design solutions, or some design solutions, for how to accommodate these symptoms. And then, you know, started going into like Amazon and Microsoft, and doing ones on ‘ADHD in the Workplace’ and here are some symptoms that ADHD employees struggle with, and here are some strengths that you might not realize are strengths that we bring to the table when you’re expecting us to do all of this, and also everything everybody else is doing. And trying to explain the difference between endurance runners and sprinters right, because we are often sprinters. And I want to go go go go go go. Now I need a break and I then go go go go go, and now I need a break. And to expect the consistent output of some other people is an unrealistic expectation. And then beyond that kind of going into what I’m doing now is a lot more talks for psychologists, and psychiatrists, and therapists, and ADHD coaches, on here is how we can maybe bridge the gap between the knowledge, the clinical knowledge, and the lived experience. Because there is a you know a big difference in how they are taught about ADHD in school and the things that we now know, and that are more openly expressed on the internet, and being able to give mental health professionals tools and let them know about communities. And let them know how much ADHD friendly accessible advice is on the internet for them to give clients to empower them to be able to help solve their own problems. And then I’ve got a whole talk about my ‘How to Get Stuff Done When You Don’t Feel Like it’ Anti-Planner talk, going through; here are the different ways to make things interesting, or make things matter. Or here’s how to create your own stuff. So, the question was not necessarily what are all of your talks, but there are … there’s so many fun different ways to express things that I’m interested in and how they coincide with ADHD.
JULIE: I think you’re doing a mighty job and it’s that conversation I believe that needs to continue. You know, it’s not … it needs to just keep rolling and I think the more pockets of society, in the workplace, or lots of different industries really, they need to understand that. And I love the bridging the gap between the scientific, or the clinical, and Joe Average on the street because they … yeah there is, yeah, they’re missing the point in some parts. And there are often ways … [Oh sorry, go ahead.] No, no. I was just going to say that it’s things like this that … that’s how the DSM will adapt over time because it’s not just based on clinical trials, it’s about experience as well.
DANI: And some of the things that are phrased in the current way that the DSM, you know, is set up, which sets up girls especially to be missed. Because some of those questions that are like “I make careless mistakes” and people go “I don’t make careless mistakes because I check everything three times.” And it’s like these over-compensations especially for, not just girls, but like people who are older who have been forced to come up with coping strategies to be able to function in society think that they don’t struggle with these things because they can’t see how much structure they built into their life in an attempt to … oh I have like goosebumps, in an attempt to be able to function because again, so much of the things that people get mad at us about are due to our difficulty conforming with societal expectations. 100%. I always, I got a whole soap box over here.
JULIE: I always refer back to the ‘standard narrative’, being what everyone else thinks we should do or perhaps our perception of what we think they think we should do, which is which is another interesting one too. Along with that careless mistakes we’ve also got forgetfulness you know, or being late, you know. My husband will never be late for anything. He also has ADHD. He’s always half an hour early, so much so that it’s ridiculous but one does what one does. [Yeah. So, you’re right.] There are some things that strategically we put in place unbeknownst to our knowledge of having ADHD. You were talking, you did reference your book which is delightful, The Anti-Planner. Now this is absolutely awesome. I’d like you to tell me all about that please Dani.
DANI: Of course. So, The Anti-Planner was initially a kind of compilation of my, I don’t actually think I have it next to me anymore, of a field guide that I had started making which contained different ways that I was trying to get myself to do stuff when I had left my job. So I actually I quit my full-time job at Gallup in on the last day of February in 2020. And it was like two weeks later, I had two weeks of like “Alright, I got this. I’m going to take online business classes. I’m going to do this, and this, and this, and then it was like shut down, everywhere. And like “What did I do? Why did … I just quit my, you know, I just quit my job. I cannot believe the timing of this but ultimately I think that, you know, that timing was important because I might have been too afraid to leave. If I didn’t, you know, because that stability and so I made some exercises trying to get myself to self-regulate in the same way that in college, where I lost this structure, that I didn’t realize that needed, I lost workplace structure. Working for yourself when you’ve got ADHD is like a whole different can of worms of difficulty with internal motivation and holding yourself accountable. So, they started as like little ways to trick myself as well as I had been taking ADHD coaching with Dusty Chipura. She is amazing and she helped to empower me to think about procrastination differently as far as how do I identify what is making me not do this? What actually is getting in the way? What mental roadblock? And then can I sort of tease that apart and see it for what it really is. And so The Anti-Planner, as it went on, became this like toolbox of all the coping strategies I’d accumulated over the years as well as ones that I was like having fun just making up. Like how can I make a Blackjack, you know, procrastination blackjack game and, you know, I did something along the lines of like you write down three tasks and if, you know, flip over the cards and it’s like 16 to 18 you only have to do, you have to do two tasks. If it’s 19 to 20 you do one task. If it’s 21 you don’t have to do any but if you bust you have to do all three. Right. And so I really enjoyed how do I take the idea of like gamification and chance and also the chance to not have to do anything. Like building in an opportunity for permission from the universe to procrastinate I think is one of the things that keeps me and keeps other people coming back. Because when you finally hit it it’s: A, it’s exciting and then B, sometimes you go “Oh well, I actually did want to get stuff done,” and then you do stuff anyway even though you didn’t have to. And there’s this whole other level of feeling proud of yourself when, you know, you feel like you were given permission to procrastinate and then you don’t. And I think that there are some really like empowering elements but the way that the book is broken up is by emotion. So there’s like the ‘Stuck’ … I don’t know, I can’t get it close the thing, but there’s like the ‘Stuck’ section and then you flip it over and it says “How are you feeling?” There’s: Difficulty getting started, Indecisive, Perfectionistic, or Distracted, which is sort of like the subcategories and each of those has a little bullet for like you know, to read it and go “Do I identify with this?” Because I also found out that there are a lot of people who struggle to identify what they’re feeling. I’ve been in therapy for a long time so I’ve gotten good at this, but it’s easy to forget that like especially, you know, people who were not societally conditioned, to be in touch with their feelings. Or, to maybe not be able to recognize it but, to read things and say like “I have unrealistically high expectations of myself. I’m wasting time obsessively tinkering, afraid of criticism, mistakes, or mediocrity and I don’t want to start unless I can do it 100% right,” Someone reads that and goes “Ooo that is me,” and then they can flip to the Perfectionistic section and find specifically exercises that were developed to address that actual road block. And the way that I describe this in my talk, the long and short of it, is if you … if I gave someone, you know, you saw like three metal circles and I said, handed you a hammer, and said you know “Get these into the wall.” And you nailed the first one and it went in just fine. You hit the second one and it didn’t move. And you hit the third one and it didn’t move and it’s like “I know I can do this, I did this before. Other people are doing it fine. What’s the matter with me?” If you don’t take the time to zoom in see that there’s you know an X, or a plus sign on the top of one, and a little minus sign on the other, and realize “Oh these aren’t nails. These are screws and screws have a completely different type of resistance and therefore have a completely different tool that is needed to deal with them. And when we are only handed to-do lists and planners, which act as a hammer, which are a place to write things down, to not forget what you need to do. But they do not help you do those things. And what people actually need, you know screwdriver-wise, is something to help get the list from “I wrote it down,” to “I actually did it.” And so that’s sort of the gap that I’m trying to bridge here.
JULIE: Wow. That’s amazing. And how long did it take you to put it all together because it’s a very thought-out book.
DANI: Thank you, thank you.
JULIE: You’ve covered everything. The …
DANI: actually, and I think that this is the part that people might not, I would say, they recognize that they’re like …”I love this book. I love the way it’s set up. I love the exercises.” This book took well over 2,000 hours for me to develop like, and it was me. It was, you know, writing, editing, designing, illustrating, concepting. And the way that I sort of did it was I did … I wrote down some interviews, questions. And I was like interviewing myself and then interviewing my husband who also has ADHD, but he has different experiences. And just voice recording, and then going through the notes, and pulling out you know pieces and like making all these different cards. And truly like it … this started off with this huge, you know, all of this work and then it was condensed down into what feels true, and what fits inside of what. And all of this was based on experience and not on research, because this does not claim to be any sort of like scientific anything. And I think one of the reasons that people really like it is they’re like these feelings are grouped by procrastinating feeling and then like sub-ones. That those groups and those feelings inside does not exist anywhere on the internet. That was developed by someone who was like just sitting around thinking about how they think all day. And so I think that one of the things that people appreciate beyond just “Oh this is really pretty and we deserve nice stuff,” but the quality of that went into it. And because I also self-published. I’ve gotten hit up by some pretty some pretty big, some of the biggest publishing games in town. But ultimately the decision to self-publish came down to me realizing that like I don’t want a book exec with, who doesn’t have ADHD, telling me how I need to make … how I need to change this. I don’t want it being potentially you know because, the other thing I will say, is that this book while it was designed for ADHD brains, is not exclusive to only ADHD brains. It does not say how to get stuff done when you don’t feel like it, you know, and have ADHD. ADHD is mentioned a couple times throughout the book but ultimately this is made for anyone who struggles with executive dysfunction. So I hear from tons of people who have depression, who have you know postpartum, who are going through burnout, who are you know just transitioned jobs, who are … And one of my favorites that I’ve had a couple of different veterans associations who have patients with traumatic brain injuries, who did not used to have executive dysfunction, who have executive dysfunction now and we’re really really feeling hopeless. And I’m like “Oh.” I have always had a hard time. Could you imagine if you didn’t have a hard time getting stuff done and then suddenly you know had a hard time getting stuff done. So hearing about the different application of the amount of people who struggle with this, you know, burnt out parents, and grad students, and all this kind of stuff, who can come together with this emotional like validation of like “I see you. I know this is hard.” I’m not up on this like horse telling you “This is what you should do. You should get up at 5:00 a.m. and take a cold shower,” you know. I think we’ve all heard the same recycled productivity advice 20 different times and people are ready for something different.
JULIE: Well, I’m so glad you’ve identified that because, you know, some people are list people but that’s not the answer, as you said. “Just write a list of the most important things to do.” Well that … it’s a little bit more complex than that. Now where can people buy your book?
DANI: So, you can get it on anti-planner.com or if you are in the US it is on Amazon. But I have not yet figured out my Amazon in other countries is like a whole different amount of logistics so, right now, Amazon is US only. But yeah anti-planner.com or on my website ADHDDD.com, that’s where my comics are. And my TikToks, and a link to my anti-planner.
JULIE: Now brilliant. And also Dani, you have two versions of the book haven’t you? You’ve got the OG original and the clean version. Can you please explain, for those that might not be aware the difference between the two.
DANI: Yes. The original version is, I don’t know if I can cuss on this? [You absolutely may.] Okay. I usually ask at the beginning of podcast but I forgot. Yeah, so the first one’s The Anti-Planner: how to get [ __ ] done when you don’t feel like it. And it is not overly gratuitous cussing but it has cussing in it. And so, but the clean version does not. It is clean language and the worst … I think the worst book in, or the worst word in it is ‘crap’ right. So, it’s like middle-schooler friendly kind of language and because even though I really enjoy cussing, and it feels like real and authentic to me, there are a lot of people who are either uncomfortable with it. But I also have a my …my audience is actually … well I’m 33 and looking at the demographics of my audience it’s actually 35 to 58. So my … you know, initially I was like “Oh this is going to be really helpful for college kids.” And it’s like, the people who are actually, you know, using this are are people who are you know further along in their journey but also, within doing so, you might get a crowd of people who are like “I don’t need a book that’s got, you know, the F word.” But people share it with their kids too. I’ve heard from some people who are like “This is our coffee table book.” The most touching one was someone who … they lost their mom and they didn’t have anything to, I guess, talk about that like wasn’t so heavy that it was too hard to get into or so unimportant that it felt really like fake and and surface level. And this book they’re like helped to really provide a bridge to be able to have something to talk about and work through. And I was like crying about it but some of the stories people send in are really really touch my heart a lot.
JULIE: Absolutely. The other thing too is that you were saying The Anti-Planner isn’t necessarily just for ADHD it’s for anyone who will appreciate … [Yeah, yeah yeah yeah], but also too, it’s not just for those without medication either … trying, as a strategy. Those with medication also needs to be, need to be pointed in the right direction. They don’t need to, but should they wish to take that direction, it’s available for them. So, good on you. I think that’s amazing.
DANI: I sort of think about … well I would say, I think about medication as like running shoes. Where like if you’re running the same race, you’re expected to run the same race as everybody else, and they’re like “What? It’s not that hard,” and it’s like well, you have shoes, and I don’t have shoes, and this sucks way more for me. But like in order, you know, if medication are shoes, or shoes that work part of the time, right but you still have to get yourself out the door. You still have to get yourself to the starting line. You still have to decide that you’re going to do it. And so I … meds are definitely like helpful and they make things less painful for me but like ultimately you know I could take them and play Candy Crush on my phone for six hours. So what you focus on, you know, having some guard rails, having some walls for your toboggan, is helpful. One of the things that I hear from people relating to like my comics, and my TikToks, and you know The Anti-Planner who don’t have ADHD but they know someone who does their. Their kid does, or their spouse does, or their co-worker does. And I hear from them how much my, you know, content has helped them to understand people and to forgive. I’m saying ‘forgive’ a lot of people because there was, it is so hard to understand what it’s like to be someone else. When your experience, especially for things that are perception based or are you know internal motivation based, it can be so easy to judge, and I think so many of us with ADHD have felt so judged our entire life. And so to have a tool to be able to share with someone to make them realize “Oh you’re not just making excuses,” someone made an entire line of comics about your entire personality. To be able to have a tool like that … I hear from people without ADHD who are really grateful who say things about how they feel a bit guilty that they, you know, were blaming their kid this whole time and were saying things that were hurtful. And they understand now how damaging that that must have been and, you know, and I said “How old’s your kid?” and they said you know, “Like 14,” and I said “Look there’s the time to start understanding and coming at this with a more empathetic angle and asking you know what you might be able to help with instead of you know jumping to assumptions or blaming. 14 is young like especially by comparison with how late people are often getting diagnosed now and so making that change as soon as you recognize that I understand you, right, and the impact that that can have. The same with when I go into these companies and talk with them about ADHD in the workplace. And there are people who understand their co-workers who have come up to me and said “They’re, I don’t know for sure that they’ve got ADHD. I don’t need to know for sure that they’ve got ADHD but all of this sounds like them. And I’ve been so angry with them for so long but it all matches up and I didn’t realize how you know hostile…. So it’s been really interesting because I thought that for a long time that was just aimed at people with ADHD but there are also ways to provide information and context to people who don’t have it. Because, I think that that is what, like you said earlier, makes a difference. Bosses who understand are going to have a way a lasting impact on the daily life of people with ADHD. So it’s not only important that people with ADHD understand themselves. Others making an effort to understand us is equally important. I have had my comics have been translated into like 16 different languages I’ve seen a little pop up. But like there’s a series that, you know, they did the like I think there’s 15 or 16 comics in like Arabic. And if you think, you know, that you know, when I talk to people about like “You think ADHD is is/has stigma in the United States?” you know, try some of these other countries where like people don’t even think that it’s real. And so being able to recognize that these go beyond language because a bar chart is a bar chart is a bar chart. And so I think that it’s been really fun to see on a universal level how many people this affects beyond just people in my country. It’s been so … I have the coolest job. I never thought I was going to be doing this. I, you know, my mom, we had a conversation about the third grade fifth grade teacher thing and she was like “I’m so sorry that I didn’t get you help.” I’m like “Everything worked out fine for me,” like I go, I would go re-up I would do everything the exact same. This has been great but I feel like without that struggle I would have not had as much context for these emotions. So, the fact that I didn’t again, even though me as a freshman in college, I also feel like I got caught relatively early but I have pretty severe, not severe, I mean I do, pretty severe symptoms and I have combined type. I know that there’s a whole separate thing about you know women with inattentive type who are quiet and they don’t, you know, they’re not as obvious versus I’m very big and loud and a bit more easier to spot.
JULIE: What’s the next project for you? What do you have in store? Or are you basking in the glory of this wonderful book and breathing?
DANI: So, there is a … there’s currently a digital bundle of 30 PDFs because people are like “When are you going to do the digital version?” and like I … because there’s so much custom art in this book, I can’t put it in a Kindle thing. It won’t format correctly you know, in order to accommodate different text sizes. It just it breaks everything and if you type in Anti-Planner one of the first things that pops up is Anti-Planner free PDF so I’m like, I’m just I am trying to keep in mind that also the experience that I want for people. So, there’s kind of two separations here where I’m excited to eventually be working towards making an app version so that people don’t have to, you know, carry around their Anti-Planner to be able to use the exercises, but that’s a bit off. Currently what I’m planning on doing is creating and developing content around these different sections. So, I’ve got blog posts, and social posts, and challenges, and free PDFs, that will do with and we’ll kind of walk through the different sections. So, I’ve got like a Perfectionistic article and there’ll be like a whole … maybe it’s Perfectionism month or whatever it is where there will be a whole amount of additional supplemental content that will be available on my website to peruse, for no charge.
JULIE: That is going to keep you absolutely busy.
DANI: Yeah, but I’m excited to be doing that because right now, so my company’s called The Anti-Boring Project and currently the last few months have been a bunch of business business business. I got to set up a project management system. How are we doing … you know, invoicing and what are … figuring out the business elements, which is not as fun as designing and illustrating things. So I’m really excited to get back to being creative.
JULIE: That is amazing. Well, well done. Well Dani it’s been an honor to chat with you and you’re doing some amazing work and I wish you all the very very best for years and projects to come.
DANI: Thank you so much. I’m excited for what the future holds.