The pressure to be productive with ADHD (Dani Donovan’s story)

People with ADHD know what it’s like to be called lazy. Is that because they don’t seem “productive”? Who better to talk about this with than the creator of The Anti-Planner: How to Get Sh*t Done When You Don’t Feel Like It, Dani Donovan (@danidonovan). Dani shares her ADHD “aha” moments and what drove her to create an activity book designed for procrastinators. 

Dani and host Laura Key chat about what it means to be productive with ADHD. Dani shares how she would criticize herself intensely so that others wouldn’t. They also talk about analysis paralysis, rejection sensitivity, friendship, and how understanding neurodiversity can change the game.

Related resources

• ADHD and perfectionism

• ADHD and “analysis paralysis”

• Dani’s website

Episode transcript

Dani: I felt like, lied to almost. I felt like, "How has nobody mentioned to me that it is possible that all of your options for productivity help were not made with you in mind?" And so my kind of "aha" moment being like, "If things were not made with you in mind, make the thing that you want." 

Laura: From the Understood Podcast Network, this is "ADHD Aha!," a podcast where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they or someone they know has ADHD. My name is Laura Key and the editorial director here at Understood. And as someone who's had my own ADHD "aha" moment, I'll be your host.

Oh, my goodness. I am here with Dani Donovan, the famous Dani Donovan. If you don't know who Dani Donovan is, you should know who Dani Donovan is. She is an ADHD creator. You may have seen her comics. If not, you should check them out. You may have seen her TikToks. If not, you should check them out. She is also the creator of The Anti-Planner, which is an activity book specifically designed for procrastinators. And I love the opening line. I'm just going to share this, the opening line of The Anti-Planner is "Your worth is not measured by productivity."

Dani Donovan, thank you for being here. You're such a big deal. How are you today? 

Dani Donovan: That's the best intro I've ever had. I am wonderful now. I'm just going to take this and set it as like my morning alarm sound or something like that. 

Laura: Can you imagine if I'm your alarm clock in the morning? But you need to set two alarm clocks if it was me. 

Dani Donovan: And then the second one is just going to be like, "Oh my God, get up." Which is usually my husband's. But I think maybe if it's in my voice, I'll listen to it. 

Laura: Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited to be talking to you today. We'll talk more about The Anti-Planner later. This is the "ADHD Aha!" podcast. I have a question for you, Dani. Have you ever talked about your ADHD "aha" moments, the moments that led to your diagnosis with anyone or like publicly or? 

Dani Donovan: The like exact, well, it's so funny that you say that. You mean the moments where I thought to myself, like, "Oh, maybe I have ADHD?" I actually did not have that moment. It's an interesting story. Can I tell you? 

Laura: Yeah, but you have to get off the show now because this is a moment, a show about those moments. Yeah.

Dani Donovan: But I had an "aha" moment. I did. So, the funny thing is, now that I know I have ADHD, I'm able to "aha" and figure out all of these ways that my life is impacted by all of these things I struggled with that I thought were personal failings, like having such difficulty doing laundry. I hadn't put the pieces together that that requires a lot of executive functioning skills and therefore could be related to ADHD. When I got my ADHD diagnosis, I was a freshman in high school and had gone in to talk to someone about depression because I was having a really hard time fitting in. Like I'd always gotten good grades in school. I just had social difficulties that my peers didn't seem to be having, and I went in to talk to her because I thought I needed to go on antidepressants, and she heard how fast I was talking and how fast I was like flitting between topics and just the tangential lines of thinking. And she said, "Has anyone talked to you about ADHD?" I was 19 and I had this moment where I literally was like, "I don't have that. Everyone I know who has that is like an annoying little boy with no friends." I hate admitting that. But that was the, I remember that being the thought process of like, "Oh no, I don't want to have that." This was in like, 2010. And then she handed me a card that had all the list of stuff and I read it and my stomach just sank, I'm like, "I'm having one thing that's like, 'Wait, I have been told that this is not a good thing,' And then the other half of my brain goes, 'This will explain so much stuff.'" And so, I really had that kind of, you know, acceptance moment. And she told me she goes, "Well, I recognize it in you because I have ADHD and you remind me of me." And so, I didn't come in there looking for things that were necessarily ADHD symptoms, but she was able to surmise, right, that, "Oh, your depression and anxiety are sitting on top of this untreated foundation of ADHD," which is what happens to a lot of girls and I think to myself all the time, honestly, "What if I wasn't so chatty? What if my psychiatrist didn't have ADHD? What if she hadn't said anything? Like, how long would it have taken me to find out?" And so, now that I've accidentally stumbled into becoming an ADHD content creator, I always want to make sure that the conversations that I'm centering are around moments that people actually see themselves right? We are so much more than that like, symptoms list. And so, I think by being able to show people like "This is what daily life is like. This is what those symptoms look like when applied to actual life experiences." Because on no list of symptoms does it say "Has difficulty grocery shopping and feeding oneself and you know, all of your vegetables go bad all of the time. So, then you eat junk food because you're too exhausted to cook anyway," right? that's not a thing and the symptoms... 

Laura: Buy fake plants. Yeah. 

Dani Donovan: When people see enough, they're like, "Oh well that's, everybody does that," And you see another one, you're like, "Oh well, everybody does that," right? And then you keep like, "Well, everybody's like that," it's like, famous last words by someone who's about to be diagnosed with ADHD. 

Laura: Totally. And speaking of that, so the untangling of ADHD, depression, anxiety is so tricky. I still struggle with it today. I'm anxious because I'm having trouble focusing? Or am I having trouble focusing because I'm anxious? Can you tell me about what was getting tangled up for you? 

Dani Donovan: It was really hard for me to kind of parse that I had been told that ADHD was really something that affected your schoolwork, right? And my mom, when I was in fifth grade, my mom had asked my teacher explicitly, "Do you think that Dani could have ADHD?" Because I kept getting demerits. 

Laura: Oh, so this was not new to you? 

Dani Donovan: Well, I didn't know she asked that. 

Laura: Oh, OK. 

Dani Donovan: I found this out later when I got diagnosed on my own, because she had asked my teacher in fifth grade, "Do you think Dani could have ADHD?" And her response was, "She can't have ADHD, she's too smart," which is really rough, because the misinformation prevalent among people who have such an impact like that, set me back. Like I could have gotten diagnosed in elementary school. Right. And because one person who didn't know what they were talking about said that to a parent. Like, there were a lot of struggles that I could have, you know, I mean, everything worked out just fine, so I'm not mad. 

Laura: But you're recording a podcast in the closet right now. 

Dani Donovan: Exactly. I'm like, you know, I have to be thankful. But like, that story is not everybody's story. And the reality is, is that thinking that it was so much about just about school and just about work and not realizing that like being a perfectionist and a high achiever as a measure of my worth. And I was coping by overcompensating, right? And it was like masking all of those symptoms. But with the depression and anxiety, realizing how much of that was all about not getting stuff done, I was sad and upset at myself for not getting stuff done. I was anxious because the stuff wasn't getting done. I was depressed because I felt bad about myself because of my inability to get stuff done. And so, so much of those I have, I give myself goosebumps, but like, I am in this constant mode of "I'm not doing enough," which ends up thinking like "I am not enough." And so, that's kind of the lies I think that we've been told for a long time. We start to believe them. 

Laura: Oh my God, yes, I just got goosebumps too, because I really did not carry on my legs. Did you, where did you get it? On your arms?

Dani Donovan: I got it on my arms. 

Laura: OK, for me it was my legs. I've had so many of those conversations. I'm anxious because I don't want to be anxious right now. And I'm feeling, and I'm distracted because I'm feeling so anxious. And all I want to do is just get the stuff done. Like the whole productivity, you've done so much in that space to take the shame out of the whole. 

Dani Donovan: Away from it.

Laura: Yeah, away from it. 

Dani Donovan: I did it for me. And then I realized anything that helps me is probably going to help other people.

Laura: Dani, I have to tell you, I loved going on your website. It's ADHDDD.com. But my favorite thing, I was scrolling around and then I got down to the footer and you pranked me up. At the footer of Dani's website. It says, "Really? You're seriously reading the footer? Man, I didn't know anyone actually looked down here. Well, this is awkward. Maybe I should have thought this through better. Whatever, too late now. Thanks for sharing this little moment with me. You're awesome." I love that so much. I was dying. It's so perfect. Especially for people with ADHD brains who, like you, almost need to be snapped out of that kind of doom scroll kind of thing. 

Dani Donovan: The book actually also has a lot of Easter eggs, and so I love getting tagged on social media. When people notice some of the Easter eggs I put in the book or Easter eggs for my website because they know a bunch of people did not see this. And it feels like a cool, you know, little thing because we pay attention to things when we are engaged and interested in them and sometimes more attention than other people, even. ADHD is not a deficit of attention. We just don't have a whole lot of say in where that attention lands all the time. 

Laura: I want to ask you about analysis paralysis. As far as I can remember, we haven't had anybody on the show yet speak to it, and I can't think of anyone more perfect to talk about this than you. What was your first memory of what we might call analysis paralysis? 

Dani Donovan: It's really funny because my mom forced me to start having to choose my outfits the night before because the morning of, she couldn't get me out the door on time because everything had to match. But to speak to the analysis paralysis getting in the way of really my own success is with TikTok. I started making TikToks in like 2019 — there weren't really a lot of people making ADHD content — and I was just doing my own thing, having fun hahaha and started getting big, started having a lot of popular videos. That was awesome. It was really, you know, lit up my brain to want to keep making more. And it got to a point though, where I cared so much about quality and my perfectionism setting in and my "Should I reshoot this when I have actually showered and, you know, put some effort into my appearance" or, "Oh, I should wait and actually write a script for this." I wanted it to be so good that I stopped making content. And because then when I did make content, the algorithm was like, You haven't posted here for three months, tough beans! Right? And I was going to say something else, but you said "shoot" earlier, so I'm like... 

Laura: You know, I allow some cursing and I'll say in my Midwestern way. But I think "tough beans" is actually just really fun and we should just all say it. 

Dani Donovan: Shout out, Grandma. 

Laura: Wait, does your grandma actually say "tough beans"? 

Dani Donovan: She did. Yeah, she did. 

Laura: Sorry, keep going. 

Dani Donovan: Hence the breaks. Oh, my God. Now I forgot what we were talking about. 

Laura: You were talking about perfectionism. 

Dani Donovan: Yeah, perfectionism and the analysis paralysis. And I read a really great article yesterday about how that perfectionism costs us, because the amount of time and effort that it takes to go from like 90% to 95% is often the same amount of time that went to go from 0 to 90. 

Laura: Yeah. 

Dani Donovan: And so, like at a certain point, you know, you got to know what are the criteria for this thing being good enough and being happy with it being good enough and just moving on with my life instead of assuming everyone is going to sit there and analyze everything you do. And I realize so much of that is borne out of the rejection sensitivity place that comes back, you know, with ADHD stuff from worrying about being judged constantly because we have been judged constantly. So, making sure that all of my stuff is above criticism, above reproach, like I have to criticize my stuff super harshly and fix everything so that nobody else can criticize me, right? And that worked for me as a graphic designer. It helped me make really great, awesome quality things. But when that starts to become part of your identity, part of your identity is like this level of quality is how I see myself. And if I put anything out there that I don't feel is that high level, like I will reject it. I don't, I don't want to do it. And so, that's how you are me and with 700 TikTok drafts and, you know, go a long time without posting, when I had been doing it consistently that like fear, that analysis paralysis all sort of gets in the way. 

Laura: Well making decisions is a really complex process. And then if you have anxiety on top of that and you're worried about getting blamed, you're worried about making a mistake, and then just the act of making a decision involves more things than so many people realize, like seeing the different possibilities and knowing what each option entails. 

Dani Donovan: And the example that I do, I think, is her task breakdown, which is like, "What is the task and why have you been avoiding it? Which feelings are getting in the way?" There's a bunch of spaces to kind of go through and process. Here are all of the big emotions of why I'm not doing this thing that I want to do. And once you can actually sort of target and be like, "Is that kind of bullshit though? That's kind of bullshit." And when I think about it. So, being able to, again, step back and reframe things and think through not just, "Oh my God, I procrastinated it again," it's "Why did I procrastinate?" Like the asking yourself constantly, like, "Why? Oh, because of this. Well, why?" And like asking until you get deep down to the answer of "Because I'm worried it won't be good enough. And I don't want people's view of me to be that. And you know, so it's better to stall out than post something I'm not proud of."  

Laura: Totally. I have a question that I mean completely as a compliment. 

Dani Donovan: OK. 

Laura: How much time have you spent in therapy? 

Dani Donovan: A decade. 

Laura: Because your ability to reframe and step back and ask why is just like masterful and... 

Dani Donovan: Thank you. 

Laura: It's been a long time for me too. So I'm kind of like, "So how many more years do I have until I get to that level?" 

Dani Donovan: But the big ones, so I had been seeing someone for a while who was prescribing medicine. She was my nurse practitioner. I did not realize she wasn't a talk therapist. I kept booking hourlong appointments. But the funny thing about my current therapist and how I found out about her is the thing that kicked off my first ADHD comic and all of this to start with. I had just started as a graphic designer and I heard some of my coworkers that we were like hanging out on the couches on our laptops working, and she was talking about what she was working on in therapy. She was talking about it. And I'm like, "Oh, that's awesome. They're being open about their mental health." I have never shared things about my mental health with coworkers, and I opened up that I had ADHD and they were like, "Yeah, we figured." And I'm like "What does that mean?" And but then we were able to take a joke about how I told stories because I kept following the same kind of pattern and we named the conductor of my train of thought, Donnie Donovan. And he was, we were like, "Oh, he's really bad at his job. And he keeps trying to take you to like every single detour," and blah, blah, blah. And I turned it into a comic to send to my coworker and she was like, "Oh my God, that's so you." And I'm like, "Oh my God, I know I made it." And I wasn't going to post it online because I hadn't talked about my ADHD openly... 

Laura: Right. 

Dani Donovan: And she goes, "It's too good to not post." And she goes, "We'll put it on Twitter. Our boss doesn't follow you or anything on there." And I said, "OK, cool. No one will see you over here." And that did not, I'm glad it didn't work out, but it took off pretty quickly and everything kind of came from there. But she ended up recommending me to that therapist who I've been seeing for four years now and absolutely love it. But I owe a lot to the fact that, like one of my coworkers was open about therapy and about mental health, and seeing someone else disclose like that and be open gave me the courage to be open because I wasn't going to bring it up on my own. Like as much of a badass as I'd like to think I am. It was seeing someone else be brave and go first that makes it a lot less scary. 

Laura: Was that the tweet that Mindy Kaling retweeted? 

Dani Donovan: Yes. Yeah.

Laura: That's amazing. 

Dani Donovan: Melissa Joan Hart just reposted it the other day, and I was like, "You were my childhood idol." 

Laura: The Teenage Witch?

Dani Donovan: Yeah. Sabrina Teenage Witch.

Laura: Yes. 

Dani Donovan: I was so obsessed. 

Laura: Dani, do you mind if we switch gears? It's like a hard right or a hard left we're going to take here. 

Dani Donovan: Switching gears is my middle name. 

Laura: Last time we chatted, you, I think you have some stories or things maybe you could share about how ADHD can impact friendship. Will you speak to that a little bit? Did I just take it to a whole other tonal level? Should we not do that?

Dani Donovan: A whole other level? No, no, no. It's great. It goes really back to what I was saying earlier in the episode when I got told, "Hey, have you thought about ADHD?" The first place my brain went to was those are the annoying little boys with no friends, because everyone I knew who had it like didn't have friends. Again, that is a obvious stereotyped generalization that is very wrong. I know that that goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway. But the first thing that I associated it with was friends. That it wasn't, "Oh, those people who get bad grades" or "Oh, those people who don't pay attention," it was like, "No one wants to hang out with them" or "They have a hard time maintaining those relationships." But now that I'm an adult, going back and looking at my past relationships, my past friendships, even, you know, dating back to when I was younger, not just not picking up on other people's social cues because I assume that everybody is honest all of the time, and if something was bothering them, they would tell me because if something is bothering me, I tell people. And that's not how everybody works, right? I wear my heart on my sleeve and other people don't. So, that was like a hard lesson I had to learn. But it turned out that a lot of people have fun finding the weakest person in their friend group and talking about them behind everybody's back because that makes you feel like you belong. You've got like, not a common enemy, but like someone that you keep in the group enough to where you've got, they tell you things and then you go back to friends and tell them stuff and then I started... 

Laura: You can feel superior to that person. Yeah. 

Dani Donovan: Yeah. Being superior. So, I was the subject of gossip a lot, especially for things that were related to my ADHD symptoms. And then also the difficulties that I have of maintaining relationships because they require maintenance just like anything else. And I struggle with maintenance in all areas of my life. And so being able to remember that people exist and that I should call them and check in on them if they don't reach out to me first or if people text me and I mean to text back. And then I don't, you know, and it looks like I'm purposely just ignoring them, or if I accidentally monopolize conversations and people think I don't care what they have to say or if I you know, there's a lot of things that lead to people who were your friends who may not say something to you and then just pull back. Like I was really started getting used to thinking everything was OK and then being all of a sudden really wondering why nobody was hanging out with me anymore. 

Laura: I'm sorry. 

Dani Donovan: Yeah. When you're different, like, kids are ruthless, man. But even as adults, like, in the workplace, you know, judgy coworkers are ruthless. ADHD, I think, primes you to being an easy target for bullies. 

Laura: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. We have a whole episode on ADHD and bullying, frankly. And why that can happen not just for kids, but adults with ADHD too, like you mentioned in the workplace. And yeah. 

Dani Donovan: But with the friendship thing, it's hard because it is yet another thing where my brain starts to tell me "You are not enough." If you are enough, people would stay. If you were enough, you know, people wouldn't leave. "You are not enough. You are not doing enough, you are not enough." And we get that message so many times and that shame of thinking that if people leave, it's our fault and wondering what we did and what we could have done differently. 

Laura: How do you cope with that? 

Dani Donovan: Finding a lot of friends with ADHD. That is the only thing that did it. All of my close friends like really, and the friends that I made that I have kept that didn't have ADHD, have all now been diagnosed with ADHD after I started making content. They were like, "Oh, wait a minute." And I go, "Oh, well, now it makes sense why I never felt judged." Because when you meet someone with ADHD and you click and them talking a bunch and getting really excited does not put you off. If they change topics a bunch of times and swerve, you're not mad at them. If you care enough about the topic, like, you will bring it back. But we are able to like, weave and flow because it just feels really natural and it feels so great to feel understood and to feel like I don't have to worry constantly that they secretly think I'm annoying and they're not telling me. 

Laura: Right. 

Dani Donovan: I don't have to worry constantly that like, they're going to be so judgy about my mess that they're going to talk to people about it. And so it alleviates a lot of that anxiety that goes into, at least for me, a lot of friendships with neurotypical people. I must have, not everybody but I have neurotypical friends, but they are very chill. There are people with ADHD who don't have chill, but there are typical people who also do not have chill, so. Chill does not discriminate. 

Laura: In your Anti-Planner did you have like, neurotypical people, people who are not neurotypical and I will call them on Sunday and I will call them... I'm just kidding. 

Dani Donovan: Yes, yes. No. I kind of have this "I'm Mrs. ADHD," right? And I had friends who got diagnosed and I'm like, "Oh my God, I should have known. Now that we're talking about it. That makes a lot of sense." But I wouldn't have guessed, especially with the perfectionists, especially with the people who make a real effort to like, "I don't want anyone to think I'm lazy," like laziness and ADHD and people calling people with ADHD lazy, that hit so hard for some people that they're like, "I have to do everything within my power to prove to myself and other people that that's not what I am, because I don't want that to be my identity." And a lot of the times they end up burning themselves out trying to live up to these expectations... 

Laura: Yeah. 

Dani Donovan: ...of society. Oh, my God. I'm sorry that I'm on my soapbox, but. 

Laura: I like it. No, but sadly, I'm still. I'm getting in there, but I'm still kind of there. I'm still kind of like, "I will prove to you all that I am not lazy. I will prove it." So, this is why I'm asking you how much therapy have you had? Yeah.

Dani Donovan: So, laziness, I'm at the point now where I'm like, "Laziness is a societal construct that was created to make people feel guilty for not being productive at all times." 

Laura: Yeah. Perfect segway. I wanted to ask you about "productivity." I'm going to put that term in quotation marks. Give me an example of before you had kind of a newfound sense of what productivity really is and what it could be, what it could mean, and the shame that surround it of when you were super hard on yourself about your own productivity. 

Dani Donovan: I had multiple meltdowns when I was wanting to do freelance branding work. Freelance work is really challenging because it requires you to manage yourself and to manage deadlines and to communicate well with clients. And I would take on this big project and I would get so excited and I would sit down to work on it and I would get so absorbed in some one little tiny aspect of the thing that wasn't actually important. And I'd get like half of one of the things done because I went down such a rabbit hole of looking things up and of possibilities and of optimizing and like getting sticky, right? Like things get sticky and I would have a meltdown and I would, it would be like, "OK, it's 10:00, it's late, but like, I can still get some stuff done. I could work for two more hours until midnight," and then I would get like a half of something done, which again is now I know is like, "Well, that's better than nothing." But when there are deadlines and potentially disappointed people like, hovering over here and I'm throwing my, like I'm in the room and at a certain point you think "If I could have just watched TV, like I could have enjoyed myself. I could have done something, anything with this time, and instead I just spent it on something that felt productive but wasn't."

Laura: Right. 

Dani Donovan: And now I'm going to cry. And then I would just cry and cry and cry and cry and cry. And I was having breakdowns. This was also before I went on mood stabilizers because I hadn't been diagnosed with bipolar II yet. And so, that does, again, contribute to some of this. But I was having these frustrated meltdowns about not getting things done, and they all came from this. "I should be doing this, I should be doing this." I always do that. And a lot of that like labeling and self judgment and frustration because I didn't, I couldn't figure out how to do it. I'm like, I'm reading so many self-help books, I'm watching so many online classes. I must be just be like, horrifically broken and nothing will fix me. Like that's how I felt. 

Laura: It's not so much that wanting to be productive, wanting to get stuff done, which is a reality in this world, right? When you have a job, etc. is a bad thing, but rather this like our perception of what it means to be productive and what productivity actually looks like, is perhaps flawed. Is that what you mean?

Laura: It was one where I hadn't learned the coping skills yet that I, essentially the The Anti-Planner is just like a giant coping skills recipe book that's sectioned by emotion. And that's what I needed, because what I kept doing was kept trying to use systems that were not designed for me and then feeling like I was the thing that was broken, right? Not that I'm actually continually picking things that were not made to work well or seamlessly with the way that my brain operates. And so what it really was, it's an issue with the tool of trying to use a time management process versus a like task management process and getting less hung up on the "It's taking me more time to do things than I thought it was going to," because that was, I was trying to use like planners. I was trying to block out my time. And then I'm like, "Oh, I made this perfect time block, and then it turns out, 'Oh, I got distracted halfway through and went down this rabbit hole,' and now everything that I planned, I spent all day, like making this perfect time block schedule, everything is off now," so it was all pointless. "What's the point? Why do I even try?," you know, and then you fall down into the rabbit hole of, like, "What's the point? Why do I even try?"

Laura: Rather than even try using planners or anything like that, I just email myself the giant subject lines of all the different things I need to do, but it'll include things like do the dishes and in five years remember to take down this picture or something like this. So, it's just this giant mix of... 

Dani Donovan: Oh my God. That's so stressful. 

Laura: It is. I don't, it's not, I'm not, listeners, I'm not recommending that anyone do this. It's terrible. It's terrible. So, hence maybe get The Anti-Planner, right? 

Dani Donovan: Yes, I think so. It's really, it is the easiest thing to sell. I tell people the name of it and the first sentence out of everybody's mouth is, "Oh my God, I or someone I know." 

Laura: And it's fun. It's so much fun. We will put a link to your website in the show notes of this episode. It's ADHDDD.com. 

Dani Donovan: Yep. Or you can, if you go to anti-planner.com, you can still take it straight to the part of the website. 

Laura: Was there anything that you wanted to touch on that you felt like you didn't get to touch on? 

Dani Donovan: I hope that more and more people are able to recognize that the way things have always been done is not the way that things need to keep being done. And if you stopped and listen to this gigantic demographic of people who have needs that are different than maybe what's been provided up to this point were, and I've got actually a couple companies now that I am getting to do some like design consulting for new features and things that they're launching, making sure that they are like ADHD-brain friendly, in the same way that like people are looking to make things, you know, colorblind-friendly. Things like that, where they are literally accessibility features. And so, whether it's a video game company or a social media company or a consulting company, anybody who's doing work that's going to be used by a lot of people and which will eventually lead to, you know, some people with ADHD, there's so much creativity abound that we are going to be able to kind of achieve together. And there's so much that I think people will be able to accommodate for, because when you accommodate for ADHD brains, you make things better for everybody, honestly. 

Laura: Correct. Yes, exactly. Thank you so much for being on the show, Dani. We'll have to do this again, because I feel like there's so much more that we can talk about. 

Dani Donovan: This was great. Oh, my God, I hate talking about myself. Never. Thank you so much. This has been great. 

Laura: You've been listening to "ADHD Aha!" from the Understood Podcast Network. If you want to share your own "aha" moment, email us at ADHDAha@understood.org. I'd love to hear from you. If you want to learn more about the topics we covered today, check out the show notes for this episode. We include more resources as well as links to anything we mentioned in the episode. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people who learn and think differently discover their potential and thrive. We have no affiliation with pharmaceutical companies. Learn more at understood.org/mission. "ADHD Aha!" is produced by Jessamine Molli. Say hi, Jessamine! 

Jessamine: Hi everyone. 

Laura: Briana Berry is our production director. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. For the Understood Podcast Network, Scott Cocchiere is our creative director, Seth Melnick is our executive producer, and I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.