DANI DONOVAN: ADHD Comic Creator

[MUSIC] This is Creativity in Captivity, I'm Pat Hazel. My guest today is an award-winning ADHD creator whose viral comics and TikTok videos are creating a gravitational pull to build an online community of neurodivergent adults. She has been featured in New York Times, Washington Post, and the Guardian. She also recently produced an activity book for procrastinators called The Anti-Planter, How to Get Shit Done When You Don't Feel Like It. Coming up is my conversation with the leader of the neurodivergent squad, author and illustrator, Danny Donovan. [MUSIC] That spark of electricity is skippin' stone, it sets you free, you're captive to a mystery. A curse of creativity. La la la la la. [MUSIC] >> Hello, hello, how's it going? >> Excellent, I'm happy to meet you. You came to me on what I call my random referral radar, and I like it. I always like meeting new people and finding out what they do. I think you come to this as an illustrator of comics and an author of this new activity book. Were you always drawing as a kid? Did you always communicate visually as one way to get it out there? >> Yes, I have wanted to be an artist as long as I knew how to hold a crayon. My entire career, I will say this as someone with ADHD, a lot of us have tons of different ideas and bounds around. And it has always been art for me. It has always been art. I wanted to be a cartoonist for the Sunday Fun, remember the Sunday Funnies? >> Sure, of course. >> I was so into Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield, and I really think that bridge between art and humor got me at a very young age to where I really enjoyed it as a medium. And I remember blowing my mind, I'm like, people get paid to do this kind of stuff. And so then when I found out about graphic design when I was in middle school, and had that similar mindset blown where I had a billboard that I was in the car with my mom. And it was a tiger with its mouth open and it said, let's have lunch. And I was like, who made that? And I remember my mom telling me, I was some artist who works for the zoo. I was like, there are artists who work for the zoo. And so being able to go into that. So I was a graphic designer for about a decade also. >> So let's do two things. I want to know more a little bit about if you learned better visually, if part of what you understood of storytelling and so forth was that words couldn't always do the magic in terms of reading or whatever, but that when you would see illustrated graphic novels or as you mentioned this billboard or whatever, if the storytelling came to you more naturally that way as opposed to regular reading. But then I wanted to just bridge over and get a little bit of an ADHD tutorial for the listener who maybe either doesn't have it or doesn't have a family member who was unaware. I want to kind of like set the table for some of the stuff we're going to talk about. So starting with that visual question, before you were diagnosed, did you notice that the visual aspect of both taking it in and putting it out into the world was kind of the better way for you to learn or was that am I just like making that up? >> No, it's definitely, it was definitely true. I think even from beyond just like an illustration medium, like I've always been so drawn to storytelling through like movies and TV shows, I love books, but I had such a, I was a harder time with it versus like having my attention really grabbed by graphic novels and by comic books and being able to spread ideas visually is not easy, like to do it well, especially like is not easy. And so being able to have access to like just a library card as a kid and being able to try a bunch of different tests, a bunch of different comics find where my favorites were and not have the burden of like having to purchase all of them. >> Yeah, that makes sense. And are you, when you draw, is your focus intense like when you're drawing a comic, do you lose track of time in that flow state? >> Yes, hyper focus, like forget to eat, stand, drink, pee the whole nine yards. And which honestly, I will say when I'm working on like comics and stuff like that, it's really helpful and it's very hard for me to work when I'm like not in that state. And so I feel like I spend time trying to like emulate the, or like get myself into a situation where I can't get in that flow state. But then it is difficult like for things like the anti-planar where I was doing that day, day after day after day after day and I was just really like neglecting my body. So it definitely can be a double-ish sword there. >> Yeah, yeah, it can be one thing or the other. What you're presently doing has all of your attention and everything else kind of doesn't matter at that point. >> Yeah, workouts, what's that? That's my H-Ware and what I'm in like total work mode. >> Okay, so yeah, because I have one son who was really, really great visual artist, focusing on reading or taking an information through that requires four times as much work as a normal person. But if it's a hands-on thing, he's an electrician now. So his activity of these are the rules of doing this at this moment. He's really exceptional at. So it can be a superpower. But why don't you without obviously an automatically doctor, but this is something that you've dealt with and you're communicating with a lot of folks that are experiencing this. Give me just an overview of the thought process because I think people's parents and people's siblings think, pay attention. They think like I told you that and you said yes. But the promise doesn't even come through and then they go, you said you do it. So all of that is a part of not understanding really what's going on in the system of an ADHD person. So like if you can give me just a base area to start thinking, then I won't be so naive in asking questions as well. >> And I think that that's just a really great point to make as far as it's such a lived experience thing and it's difficult to understand it if you have not lived with it because thing it's challenging to see other people struggling with stuff that's not hard for us and to fully be able to someone was having a hard time tying their shoes. It's just like, well, it's not that hard to do it like this. And it's like, okay, well, I've tried that and that doesn't work for me. I'm glad it works for you. And so a lot of us end up in this situation where we do feel kind of chronically misunderstood. But this dysfunction, I think that the dysfunction of things not working how they're supposed to. And for so many of us, what that looks like is I know what I need to do, but I can't get myself to do it. Or I want to be doing this thing and I'm not doing it and I'm mad about it. Or I don't want to be doing this thing and I keep doing it and I'm mad about it. And so all it ever is like not doing what I want to be doing, procrastinating, not just unfun things, but even stuff that we do enjoy, things that we really do want to do. We'll sit down to do it and just kind of like freeze sometimes. And so I think so many of us are just like walking contradictions and people do get frustrated with that. And we understand why they're frustrated. And it's like, I'm frustrated at myself all the time. I have to live with this 24/7. And so many of us kind of do get to the spot where we're used to letting ourselves down that we like kind of erode a bit of that self-trust. We worry that other people don't trust us. And so it just kind of becomes this cycle. Now that's really interesting. I like what you just said about almost not trusting yourself sometimes in the process because it's not laziness. There's so many things that gets misunderstood at. It's not always resistance. It's not that I don't want to do this for you. I just can't remember to do it right now. I said yes. And while I was doing something else and it doesn't retain, there's not a container in my mind for take the trash out later. It's either I have to get up from the chair and do it in the present. That seems to be the most important thing. Even if you make a list, I imagine that those kinds of things help. But then do you remember to check the list? It's a house of cards. It's so funny because inspiration can come from anywhere. But I'm like, I literally just had a new idea for a new comic from this exact, from this conversation. This is pretty much like, so I think I have ideas as like post-it notes. I love, I'm a giant post-it note girl. I got a giant thing of crumpled post-it notes. But like each post-it note representing an idea for project management. A lot of what I do is calm my words and stuff. Or he put sticky notes up on a wall somewhere. But it's like my sticky notes aren't as sticky as other people's. So they're like falling off onto the ground. And so it's like I'm looking at it, thinking I've got a full complete picture because I did put your post note up on the wall. I put it there. And then I went looked over here. And then I looked over here to grab another thing and went back up and yours fell down. And I didn't even notice. And that's really how it feels like it's like out of sight, out of mind. But like, until someone goes, "What about my post-it note?" And you just blink at a look at it and you look down on it on the ground next to a bunch of other abandons. Yeah, yeah. It's like you're writing your list in that lemon juice that turns invisible. Yes. And then we're going to talk about your anti-planar. I think there's a lot of things in there that are practical activities and ideas for getting you focused in a form of a game or activity that could help unblock that productivity issue. But boy, that must have been a difficult thing for you to complete given the condition that you're in half the time. Meaning if you say I'm going to write a book, that amounts to being a series of chapters, which is a series of pages, which is a series of ideas. Every one of these is a task to complete. And how long did you work on the anti-planar? About 3,000 hours. Okay, that's a lot of time. Yeah, it's a lot. People are like, "This is so cool. How is it so much cool?" I'm like, no publisher. Because I self-publish it. No publisher would ever let me spend this much time on this book. And that's why it's great. Because you're an artist, you designed it in an artistic way. Definitely is something that is engaging in terms of its interactivity. The [BLANK_AUDIO] illustrations actually took longer than the writing. - Okay, but that's the part you're naturally an illustrator. But the ideas flowed out, huh? - The, I'll say, sistine chapel of what I actually didn't realize until much later was the thing I'm most proud of with the book 'cause it was like, it was fun to write. It was, and I'm a short form content creator. And so all of them are very like, bulleted out easy to digest single page experiments, essentially written like a recipe almost versus like a book for someone to read. And so I really like being able to write like that. I love being able to illustrate, I love being able to design stuff. But at the end of the day, taking my brain and sitting down and going, why don't I want to get stuff done? Brain-serving all those out and kind of separating them into what ended up being the navigation system for the activities, which is how am I feeling and going, okay, well, I'm overwhelmed. Well, what kind of overwhelmed am I, right? 'Cause am I intimidated? Am I over committed? Am I panicking? Am I burnt out? Like what sort? Because all of those different resistances require different tools. And so what I ended up kind of doing was like, a lot of people have seen the feelings wheel where you've got, okay, well, you know, that you're happy. Well, you've got excited and you've got surprise. Those are two different kinds of happy. It's sort of like that with the stuck overwhelmed, unmotivated, disorganized, discouraged. They've all kind of got these like sub-emotions. And so the book is designed so you can identify what is this resistance I'm feeling so that I can find the tool that helps. But I find that the creativity that came from like developing a new framework was something I'd never done before. And but then I got to pair it with, how do I make little comic characters that represent visually all of these different feelings? And so getting to not just illustrate, but illustrate what emotions feel like was really fun. - It's got a little Pixar movie going on there. - Yes, exactly. I was just about to say that. And I was like, it's, and I've got a little story at the beginning and I think that people understand Inside Out. And it is a medium in which you can have people have these sorts of like insights about themselves. I always say like a spoonful of meme humor helps the painful insights go down. I find that the more kind of whimsical, the more like, I was a childish, you can bring, but like people, think about even like self-help books and they think of black text on a white page, much longer than it needs to be so that it could fill up the size of a book so that the publisher could be happy that this is a book size. - Yeah, and when you read it, you just hit a wall. Like you hit this overwhelming wall. - I get it. - Administrative, yeah. Our friend Pete Doctor, who was our very first guest on this podcast is the Inside Out creator. And that is based on his daughter, Ellie, and how she was thinking and how she was feeling and all of that, which was a very unlikely thing for a movie to be made out of. When it came out, it was like a, wait, what? What is about it? But I do think that people more and more want to understand their feelings and how they work. Emotions can drive a lot of things. And some of the things you mentioned there, resistance particularly can take lots of different forms as fear can. If you couple that with something that chemically creates those obstacles, it's a mind field. You're just constantly trying to work your way through that while the journey that you're on is to get you somewhere with the outcome, whether it's a book or a single comic panel or whatever it is. Do you work well with deadlines? Is that help you or does that terrify you? - I love deadlines. The hardest thing in my life right now is I'm my own boss. So I make the deadline. So the deadlines don't mean anything. And what I found is the reason why the book got finished was I took pre-orders. - Ah, right, you owed them. I did and I am so glad that I did because I put some fear, I was just like, all right, gotta get this cranked out, gotta get this done. But I find that if there is it like, oh, there's an event and I want to have this initiative launched by this event. Like I struggle so hard because I want to finesse things. I want to make things perfect. And this little, how do I make things perfect? Getting something from 90% to 100%. Takes as long as it took me to get from zero to 90. - Yeah, well I think deadlines are critical. Most of the creative people that I talk to understand that it's not just the pressure of a deadline. It's the notion, 'cause even if you do it the night before staying up through the night, you will get it done. But with no deadline, when it's just an open meadow, oftentimes you will find that there's no incentive to get it going. I feel like normal people understand April 15th is a text deadline. They have certain things in them. They understand it when you put it in the context. But I think that's what makes weddings happen is they send out a whole the date card and they create a mate, just a made up number. On this day, we're all gonna come together. And it just gets closer. And now, oh, we got catering decisions. We've got music decisions. We got readings. We've got this thing. We've got our outfits. We've got, who's gonna throw the flowers? Who's gonna give the ring? It's like producing a Broadway musical. And the normal person wouldn't have to do that. But they put the date out there first. And then suddenly they're caught up. And that's what creative people have to do. I think Jerry Seinfeld said it best on this podcast where he said, when you're your own boss, you have to learn to be a better boss than you are an employee. You have to make yourself sit down and do the creative time because the employee is finding a way to take a nap and to get the laundry done and do other things because it kind of on the company's clock and nobody's watching them. So it's like, hey, learn to be your own boss in a different way and put pressure, have the boss put pressure on the employee. - That's like really good mindset shift that I actually think I really need to do here right now. - Yeah, I mean, I didn't say it to be tough loving on you. I just know that if you're like me, which I work for myself, that there are days that I'll do all kinds of crazy creative things thinking, okay, this is my ideation day or whatever. But the bottom line is, I have to prepare for this interview with you. I have to know who you are. And if I don't do it by the time we start talking, then I'm not ready. I loved looking through all of your stuff and I want to really dial into the anti-planar 'cause there's so many activities, I think there may be up to 100 activities in there that are actually creative ways to jumpstart. You have a thing called heads or tails a way to identify roadblocks, the pros and cons list, all of those kinds of things. And it says anti-planar, but it is actually an activity book. It's not like a disorganizer. That's what an anti-planar sounds like. - I love that. - But is something where a prompt or a notion is like, hey, just focus on these two pages right now. And in it, you have choices. Yes or no, I'm gonna do this today or I'm not. I think what the heads and tails want is, you want to describe heads and tails and then we'll pick a few other ones, but. - Yeah, so heads and tails are similarly, I've got ones like a dice roll where you kind of turn yourself into a D&D character, where you write down tasks, especially ones that you've been putting off for a while, so you technically have continued to put them off. And heads and tails is just simple enough of flipping a coin. If it's heads, I do it today, if it's tails, I don't. And you go down your whole list and you do that. And now you've got a list of, you're gonna do this, just this stuff today. And the universe has given you permission to continue procrastinating these other ones. And I think that that's one of the things that people really like about the book. There's a win that it says you can take it off the list. - Yes, I've got procrastination blackjack. If you get a 21, you don't have to do any tasks. Like there's quite a few things on here where actually there is, or if you get a natural 20, when you're playing the dice roll one, you don't have to do any tasks. And so there are people though, where like, well, they love about the anti-planar is that it's a momentum machine. So when you get it out and open it up, you have made the decision to do something. And that's actually the first step. It's not even writing it to do list. It's making the decision that you're gonna do something. And so like, access is helpful, motivated for people 'cause they know as long as I grab it, like I'm on my way, I'll get there. But with the 20, oh, I rolled a 20, I don't have to do anything. But I do want to do something. So I'm gonna do this again and do it. And I have heard from so many people who are like, you giving me the option to do something when that I feel like the universe did give me permission to not do anything. And I did it anyway. I feel like, like, where's my trophy? It gives, in addition to sometimes that like, relief of if they just needed a break, okay, I've got a break. But if they do decide to go ahead and do something anyway, you just get to feel like you're on top of the world. Which people aren't necessarily used to 'cause no one has ever given them permission of like, what if you just didn't do anything right now? - Right. Well, I feel like when that happens to me and that comes up once in a while, I do something else and I think, this is bonus time. I pulled this other thing off. And it's usually something else creative that I wanna do. But I might not have even thought of it if something didn't get canceled. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have the whole day free. So I don't sit around doing nothing. I just, I try to turn it into something that I couldn't do normally unless I had the day off. - And I think that people do, there's something about risk. I didn't do like really research before I made this. The book is just put together by someone with a bunch of lived experience and a visual communication and design degree. And being able to make something that when you go through it and fill out, I'm doing dice roll or I'm doing procrastination blackjack, being able to factor in like risk 'cause the little like slot machine brain is my ADHD really does like to lean into that. And so for procrastination blackjack, you've got, you through right down three tasks and you flip cards over. And if you get, I think it's under 17, You have to do two tasks between 18 and 20. You do one task if you hit 21 on the nose You have to do any task and if you bust and go over 21 you have to do all three Oh, people do get the opportunity where they flip it and they're like, okay Do I want to do the two or am I gonna go for it? And when they hit the blackjack? It's like, oh my god. This is so amazing. But when you bust, you're like I just ironed that That's an interesting risk risk to reward right to see what kind of a person you are now You have something in there called distractions list which I think a lot of people Boy, they always have a million excuses and those distractions mount up So tell me the how what the what the idea is there for them to write down all the distractions that they see on a daily basis Mm-hmm and kind of what gets what do you find like chronically coming up as something that takes your attention away And I think this is especially prevalent for people who work from home But you've got different versions of it and like an open office environment and that kind of thing And so writing down what those are and then trying to There's different ways to troubleshoot how might I mitigate this before it becomes an issue Like how can I if I know this is gonna keep happening? How well how can I design my environment in a way to where this is less likely to be an issue and so for some people It's as small as like your cat constantly cat does not listen Cat wants to jump on the desk all the time throw the cat off the desk cat wants back on the desk throw off the desk I used to literally keep like a little water bottle on my desk And I did hear from somebody who emailed in and was like you're not supposed to do that and like all right My cats are okay. I think that they're I think that they're fine But I have stuff where people had not thought of before like putting a Do not to stir sign out when they really need to be in deep-focused mode or some people do like a color coding System and so for people who work from hub. I have a sign over my door on the outside that says no one gets into this See the wizard no way no how and it's fantastic sign But it my kids are grown now and that's sort of a thing But when we lived in Mindaville, Louisiana I would put that sign out if even if they wanted to do the sweetest thing which was bring mail and drop it off or whatever I just thought hey, I'll take the sign down anytime That I that they can come in but if I really have a deadline or need to get something to it was really an easy way and a Fun way for them to see daddy's working. Yeah, now I consider that distraction is something that I call the to don't list So everybody knows how to make it to do list But just as powerfully is an undue list or a to don't list which is make that list of whatever it is whether it's I'm not eating anymore sugar You have to put as much concentration into not doing things as you do to doing things because a lot of it's not productive for us It's crazy, but I feel like making up any system which is what you've done here makeup systems that work for you So as they find an activity or a chapter in your book Some of that's going to work better for some people than other things But it doesn't require you read the whole book to get active you can flip to any activity and you're in I feel like that Just like you said if you pick up the book you're at the start line of something There was a military general the very first part of his book was get up and make your bed and Make your bed every day. Well, it's a good discipline But also it keeps you from getting back into it if you're a person that deals with depression the place you want to be He's in bed. You got something done today. You've already done something and that really does send a message to your brain that there are other productive things to do I think that one of the biggest things that the anti-planner does for a lot of people is help them to Same thing with my comics where it's like I want to understand myself better like who does not like understanding themselves Better and why do I keep doing this thing that I don't want to be doing and so for the anti-planner to it's got 16 different subsections To be able to help people identify what is causing their procrastination because each of the sections has like little bullets that say I Like intimidated might say like there's I've got so much to do where this is gonna take so long or I don't know I don't have everything I need and all of these sort of like statements that you read and if you relate to it You know, that's the section that you might need to go and check out So there's a lot of people who have a hard time Knowing what they're feeling in the first place So all they actually have to do instead of seeing the word and going I feel intimidated is to read these sentences and go oh, I this sounds like my thoughts this must be what section need to be in and so that way when you Are feeling that way and you end up in that section now you've got targeted strategies that help solve for that resistance again because it's like even I say like you can get a screw into the wall with a hammer, but you're not gonna have a good time And so it's one thing to have all of these different tools in a toolbox and there's another thing to being able to have like This is a system for if you can start with what am I trying to get done and then move on to that and what's making it hard Now you don't have over 100 strategies to to flip between a get precision paralysis of like okay Well now I'm procrastinating by picking what activity I want to do You've got kind of those targeted ones, but then again like you said it's a bunch of different systems So I've turned it into where my what if your one system was that you've got a hundred systems and and that way We can also get rid of that guilt and that shame of like oh I quit things It's like what if the plan is quitting things babes What if we know that's gonna happen so we're not gonna get mad at ourselves when it happens? Yeah, I'll tell you what when it came to exercise I Couldn't run on a treadmill It felt like I was going nowhere any minute I could get off answer the phone or do something else like I couldn't Just look at the clock. I got to stay on here for another 45 minutes. It just didn't work for me But at that time from my house I could see this big antenna at the top of the hill that was I don't know just a just giant radio signal thing and I would say to myself I Need to go to that radio tower as my exercise and then come back because if I could get to the radio tower I was forced to do the other half of the walk which was coming back So it was a different mindset though, which was I just have to get to the radio tower That was really working for me and then I moved to another house and there wasn't the radio tower So I found this interesting kind of nature walk not too far from my house But even on that nature walk I would go and then if I thought of something on the way Oh, I gotta get back I got to mail that package and I wouldn't go as far So I Identified that as like an obstacle and I started to drive my car To the top of the hill where the walk would go and leave it and so if I got to the bottom I had a walk back up to get the car and it really Worked for me differently because then I always had to do both parts of the exercise and I know that sounds ludicrous But I know how I work and it was like well if I don't get the car now I got to walk up there and get it another time so it it actually helped me to drive away from my home instead of walk away from my home It's just crazy I would want literally walk all the way down the hill to this golf course that was right by my house I was home and I was like oh I gotta go back up and get that car That's the thing that's beautiful though. That's such great like problem solving and I think that people feeling empowered to like Solve problems like that. That's like okay if you can form that self-awareness is really step one of What is it that I'm trying to do and what is making it hard like where is the failure point because essentially for a lot of This people you just like reverse engineered like the behaviors and being able to point at like what is making that behavior happen What keeps me doing it or what keeps popping up and what can I adjust and so people kind of also having that mindset shift to Like experimentation of like oh, I didn't try this and I failed It's like I tried this and it didn't work Do I care enough to figure out why it didn't work and what I can change and what I might try again Okay, I tried to get that did work and kind of take that judgment out of it because the expectations are different And I think that the expectations management for a lot of people when they try new things can be such a hurdle because if you Feel like you've tried and failed at things tried and failed at things bought things stopped things started things stopped things like all you've got Is baggage yeah, and I'll tell you what sometimes getting rid of the baggage Especially when yourself employed is to find an accountability buddy and that sometimes is somebody They don't even have to know that they're doing it for you, but you can say hey I'm gonna turn one of these into you every Friday or let's have a Mastermind group where we meet on zoom like you'll prepare for other people and You'll be there and you'll be reliable for them when you sometimes wouldn't be for yourself So it identifying and creating those kinds of things and saying oh, this is an area that not only do I need support I can give support is kind of a nice thing among creative people I want to double back for a second though to find out when you got diagnosed were you diagnosed for ADHD when you were a kid or an adult I got diagnosed my freshman year of college But my mom asked both my third grade and fifth grade teachers if they thought that I could have ADHD and my third grade teacher said she can't have ADHD She's too smart and my fifth grade teacher said well, she's getting good grades So I don't really know what would what they do is what she said and I didn't find out until I was an adult Do making ADHD content was when my mom told me that she had asked my teacher I might might have it because I was getting again great grades But I kept getting all the comments that was like Danny to learn to stop distracting others Because you're in a different mode you're in a social mode or a playful mode All right, I finished my work. Why are you guys done yet mode and what ended up being the case though for me was for many women That does not happen a lot of women have inattentive type and I have combined type and so I the combined type and women A lot of people cause what like chatty cathes where that hyperactivity can show up as excessive Chit quote unquote excessive chatty-ness. I'm like excessive feels like a subjective word, but being able to know that even just talking is so stimulating. And so a lot of us do talk for that stimulation versus like I was not climbing trees to clumsy for that, but being able to go back and look at all of these report cards also from, oh, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, and then suddenly at C in the middle of nowhere. And it's like, oh, I didn't like that teacher. And so pretty much every grade that I got that was not a great grade, you could point at it and I could tell you about the injustices from that teacher's class. So I didn't try as hard for them because as soon as I decide that like I'm out, like I don't want to do this anymore. It's it's done. You don't get to do that as much when you grow up. We can't be like I don't like them. So I'm just going to shut down. Yeah, you got to figure out how to be part of that team or something. But the ADHD comics that you focus and put out there help explain the struggles in a way that gives them both a storytelling and visual aspect when a simple line of words wouldn't do the job per say. How frequently are you putting out a comic? I used to put them out multiple like at least one a week. I haven't been, especially since I was working on the book, because now I'm stuck in this like business building part. So I've been getting right back into making sketches, which is great because I had been disconnected for so long and I didn't realize how much that made me like not feel like myself because I'd stopped making the things that people liked that I was doing. I feel like once you do something and you're good at it and you have like a big smash success because the anti-planner's got, we've sold like over 100,000 copies now and it's got like a 4.9 stars. Thank you. But now it's like well now what? That was my first thing straight out the gate. And so like the pressure that I already- Wait, it has 4.9 stars. Are the missing stars is that from the third and the fifth grade teacher? Yes, probably. It's people, well a lot of them, it's I, people got scam copies because I have counterfeiters. I have people who re typed the entire book, made a ton of spelling errors, scanned all my illustrations, printed it on like paper that you can see through. And so people were ordering them from some of, like from my legitimate listings from my Amazon listing and receiving a fake book and then going leaving a one star review. So how do we know we're getting the real one? What's the what's your website? I assume that's where the sales go. Yes, is anti planner dot com anti dash planner dot com. And that will take and then ADHDDD dot com is also where like my comics are and my TikToks and stuff like that. So we've got the clean, the clean language edition and the regular edition. And so being able to- Yeah, I want to talk about the clean version. So how dirty is the dirty version? I know that in the clean version you talk about dang and heck and like those are kind of the replacement words. But is it just that when you wrote the first version, you were just being as honest as you could about everything. And that's, is that include the F word? Yeah, and then just some people don't like cussing. Yeah, there's not like a gratuitous amount of it. So the changes, it was one of those things that we have to teach like we have like teachers and a lot of like psychology professionals and stuff some parents of like they don't want to give their sixth grader or cussing book. Even those sixth graders, like other parents are like, I can't get it away from my kid. I had a buy a new one because my kids stole mine. But wanting to be accommodating for people who are like, I really want this content, but I am uncomfortable with cuss words or I can't have cuss words. And so- I understand that maybe you should market it as the putting the cuss in customer service or something No, it's funny. I think they do that on number which podcast I listen to. It's one of the all things considered or something. I can't remember which one it is. But they say if you want to hear the soft language version go to our website. And I always think that they should cuss in that like in the announcement. They should say go to the fucking other website. Love it. The thing that's crazy is it was one of those things that we had requests about. And I just put it off for a year. And then I finally was like, you know what? I'm gonna sit. I bet it won't be that bad. And it took a day. It was just one of those things where you put it off thinking it's gonna take forever. And then you sit down to do it. Like I had a time where I had put off emptying the trunk of my car for four years. Like I'd quit a job, put my entire desk in my trunk and then never touch my trunk for four years. And then I finally went to go do it and it took me 18 minutes. And I'm like, I'm so mad. I can't even feel proud. Well, I think it's great that you did put out the clean version. I think one of the things that we we can all do is we can listen to the worlds, the desire for what we have. And that is not a compromise to the thing, the beautiful platform that you built here. It just means more people can get to it. So it would be like putting it out in Spanish language or other versions of it. It just be a better tool. And right now we actually are running into an issue where they sent us the wrong editions. So now we have currently all clean editions. After this call, I'm going to finish up an email that I'm writing to people say that I call oops, all clean editions. And it's that for a while here, we're going to have to push say the clean language, which again, there's I think probably like maybe 12 places in the book where it's different, but it's for some people the spirit of the thing. Well, here's what I would say make an activity out of it. Okay. And one of your promotions on Instagram or say clean version write your own dirty words in the column, change crap to shit if you want to whatever you're feeling customize your book to your language. Yeah. That's a good idea. You have to make the best of it. It's a situation where the core value of the material is not based on the language. I know that was the authentic voice, but if they want the director's cut, that'll be the next version. The authentic voice is actually what I am able to then lean into. I get to be transparent about the fact that I'm like, Hey, I'm running a business stuff happens. This is what's happening. If you'd like to support me, here's how in the same way with the counterfeiters where I was like this terrible crappy thing is happening. Like this is what's going on in people that wanted to support or I was going through a cyberbullying thing like at the end of the year. And so like having issues that come up as a business owner, as a contact creator, being able to be transparent and vulnerable with people and know that they like seeing behind the curtain. They like being able to know of this person who created this thing and then launched the small business. People are actually invested in me as well as the product. Because I think they just like to see a creator who was like, I did have big publishing houses who wanted to publish the antipeliner. And then I saw the deals that they were looking to give me. And I was like, I'm not doing that. Not doing that for you to tell me what to do. Yeah, yeah. You got your own shark tank where you realized that you would invest in yourself instead of letting somebody take the fatted cow to the fair and sell it and then turn around and make it like, hey, we're going to pull all this stuff that we don't like out of it. Yeah. And I'm like, no one could tell me what this can't be. I'm working on a two zero and adventure email sequence. Because it's just like one of those things is like I hate as with everything as with planners words. Like I like the idea of this thing. How can I make it different like I have a pathological need to be unique. And I'm like, how can I make this different? How can I make it feel different? How can I make it engaging? But also what is it about how people usually do this that loses me? And what can I do to like grab that and like kind of pull it back in? And I think that that's what I ended up doing with the antipeliner was so much of like, what is it about other materials? Like I've tried so many things. What is it that I liked and didn't like? And then you can just use the stuff that you kept it. You offer quite a variety there from activities to comics to strategies to coloring pages, games, various prompts. And I think that it's just a great jump starter. Tell me a little bit about what your perspective is on people setting expectations for themselves. I have two different things in the book. There's one that's called how to set realistic expectations for yourself. And then there's one called how to set realistic expectations at work. And because those are actually two different things. But being able to identify what the bare minimum looks like. Because when you put the bar on the ground, you like can't help but get over it. And then you get to at least know that you went over and everything else like I was talking about earlier when you don't have to do something and you do it anyway. Everything else is like gravy. You feel like a rock star for going above and beyond versus like always putting the bar super high, thinking that I can shame myself into doing a good job. And all I'm doing is kind of setting myself up for failures. I was thinking about it when you had mentioned your kind of like walk strategy is that I had this thing that I do with my husband that I started after my body kind of as an atrophy to bit after working on the book and I'm making time to work out. And I couldn't get myself to work out. We call them stop sign walks. That if the other person says, Hey, do you want to walk to the stop sign unless you like could not, unless you physically there's a reason you cannot do it right now. We have just put down what we're doing and go to the stop sign, which is like a two minute walk from our house. Then once we get there, being able to go, okay, do we want to go to the next stop sign or do we want to go home? So it's like a little checkpoint. We'd walk to the next stop sign. Say, do we want to go to the next next one or do we want to go home? And so everything from that point forward is like one more little milestone to check in and be like, I could go home if I want. So if I do go to the first stop sign and I we turn around, it's like, I still worked out. I did the little minimum that I wanted. I can feel good about that. And everything else feels like awesome versus thinking, I'm going to do a walk around lap around the whole neighborhood. And oh, I only made it to the stop sign. Like you could have the exact same action and not feel it's good about it. So I think it really does come down to the setting expectations low. And it's difficult when you're creative and the thing that you're setting expectations for is a creative project. I will say that those are different. Those are two different things. And that is a different. Well, I admire that you did it. I've been working on a book and you're going to find this ironic, but it's about finishing projects and I cannot for the life of me pick it up. At the moment, What I'm doing. as you talk about self-awareness, I'm identifying that the crisis in the world and the chaos in the world is a bit overwhelming. And because of that, you feel like what's the point? If this is all going to implode, why am I working on this thing? However, I am finding that I give myself daily activities or nightly activities where I can finish it in the sitting. And again, it's like lowering the expectations of myself. But I actually do a little project each night where I know that I have now 20 to 30 minutes and I have to complete it. And then I put in an envelope and I mail the results off to somebody because it's a distribution mode. But then I also don't think about like I can't make a Pulitzer Prize winning eight-page poetry booklet. It's got to be done and I got to get rid of it. So that actually relieves me of all this concern I'm having for the bigger project. And it's helpful at this time to be I guess flexing my discipline, but not worried about going into the Mr. Universe pageant. When you talked about how you wrote the book in little segments, the way you have content that is digestible and bite-sized, that reminds me of saying about don't write the whole book. You don't have to go to the final destination on the map. You just have to go as far as your headlights will take you on the drive. And as long as you keep doing that, the headlights keep moving out and you can make the whole trip going those short distances. Well, what's interesting is that so much about the book I did not plan, which is very, very relevant. But like I use the activities in the book to get the book done. And so that there are examples in the book that truly are not like fake examples that I made to be cute. There are like actual meta examples of me working on the book with the book, but I had gotten to the point where there was this feeling of like I'm never going to this is never going to be good enough. I can't finish this and sort of getting to that idea of like what does success look like for today. Because let's see other thing is when I don't finish something it's like I don't feel like I can feel happy walking away from it. And so that was really this like if I can get it to this point, then I will be done. And if I get to that point, then I can turn off and I can go and enjoy myself and not feel guilty for watching stranger things for the seventh time or whatever it is. I remember the other thing I was going to try to get it, which is that I sat down to write the content of the book and I was feeling very perfectionistic about it. And I go, you know what, I'm just going to set a timer. I'm going to do activity in the book that's called speed run. I'm just going to like give myself five minutes per page and brain up and then I'll come back and finish it all up. Well, what ended up happening was I created a structure of like what it is, what it does, how it works, blah, blah, in order to brain dump. And then I kept it. I was not planning on having it be all bulleted all instructed, but I came back to fix it back up and I looked at it and I go, this is the easiest way to understand this information. I don't actually need to change this and make it a full written. It's actually better and more digestible this way because at the core, all I needed was an outline. Yeah, but also what you did was you put the judge aside because you were really doing a rough draft. And I used to always I would even take that first draft and dumb it down like when I was writing for sitcoms and other things, I would call something a sandpaper draft, like which was below rough draft. But the point was that it was not precious and so much good stuff came out because I couldn't nobody was going to see it, but me in the end, once you set it in a drawer for a little bit and pick it back up, you kind of don't remember writing it. Well, this is pretty good. Who wrote this because you aren't beating yourself up at the time. I think there's a mindset. And now this is when I use with other people, it's called API, which is assume positive intent because sometimes people will confront you with something a neighbor or somebody and you all you want to do is be defensive, but you have to kind of assume initially that they have a reason for creating this conflict. And that takes the temperature down, you know, on when things are happening. And I think that's part of all of this is creating positive productive mindsets at times when you don't feel like getting shit done, which is what the subtitle of your anti planer is. We don't always feel like it and shit done, but it does feel good when you get it done like it's always feels great to have written sometimes it's torture to write. And the consistency factor is like the biggest thing was I was like, I want to design something that was designed to be used inconsistently. So people were like the only consistent thing in my life is that I'm inconsistent. And so people there are people who pre ordered this and never open it. And then they see one of my tick talks about it and reminded them that they have it. And they're like, I've had this for two years. And I finally opened it and oh my god, it's amazing. I used this a couple times. I forgot about it or I lost it and they came back and found it. And so you don't have people who are like this went bad on December 31 or this this became something that I've got a bunch of like empty pages. And I think for people who especially are used to feeling like failures or for quitting things saying like this is the plan. Like you have been accommodated that this has been designed around the way that your brain works and not in just a way that I'm saying that but like truly it is from the beginning like there's a section right when you open the book that's called re self-defeating bullshit. And it's got a bunch of different thoughts of like I know you're going to tell yourself it's too pretty. I don't want to write in the pages. I know you're going to tell yourself, well, what if I just lose it or what if this is one more thing that I quit all of the different ways in which I think that I'm anticipating failure. And so I hear from people who are like there is no bigger street cred to I understand you then like already shooting down all the excuses you've got for why this is already going to fail. Yeah, often the toughest bully lives in our own head. And that we don't like it from the outside but somehow we'll tolerate it from ourselves because we are better at making excuses than putting out the product that we want. Will you share before we depart the avoidance bingo card? Oh, yes, I do love avoidance bingo. So avoidance bingo. I've got in the book. I think there's an example that's got a whole page that's pre filled out that's got different examples of tasks. And then there's ones that there's a blank page that has like home, contact work for the different like columns. And then there's one that has them completely empty. And so that I've actually used the completely empty one. So I moved out to Atlanta. It's very difficult for me to like get I'm an extrovert but like getting myself out of the house is still hard when especially working for myself and working from home. You're a shud in extra. When you're married, you're like, I don't need to go out and not going out to the club or anything like that. What am I going to do? And so I had like an explorer Atlanta thing. And so I've got one that's like explored Atlanta and it had a column full of exploring Atlanta things and I've got home decor stuff and I've got hobby stuff. That's not even necessarily things I want to get done that are like pulling teeth like doing taxes. It's stuff that I want to get done like making more polymer clay earrings that I have been making time for. And so that I think that's the other thing that people take away from the book because of some of the examples to are like, this is how to get shut down when you don't feel like it. And so I think that's the thing that you sometimes don't feel like doing our stuff that you do like want to do again like so as for people telling me this helps me get back into my hobbies. That feels really good. Well, I want to thank you very much for sharing there's so much more for people to learn by looking up the anti planner. Subtítol how to get shit done when you don't feel like it or the clean version. I imagine this how to get crap done when you don't feel like it. And often there are digital PDFs on my website also. Okay, but you are transforming the world by humanizing the struggle for folks with ADHD and you're showing them by example and also through creating this manual practical ways to be able to like identify how you work and then give them something to break through the roadblock. I think it's amazing. I thank you very much for spending some time with me today. This has been great. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for listening. 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