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March 02, 2026
What if the problem was never you… but the tools you were handed?
Dani Donovan is an award-winning ADHD creator, bestselling author, designer, and founder of the Anti-Boring Project. Her book The Anti-Planner: How to Get Shit Done When You Don't Feel Like It has sold over 100,000 copies.
Dani was diagnosed with ADHD as a freshman in college after years of being told she was too smart to have it. She did well in school, pulled all-nighters, burned herself out, and quietly assumed the everyday stuff she couldn't manage, laundry, hygiene, keeping up with life, were character flaws. They weren't. They were executive dysfunction.
Once she finally understood her brain, she started translating that into art. Her ADHD comics took off fast, her first hit 100 million views and was shared by Mindy Kaling. That reach turned into something bigger: The Anti-Planner, a 100+ strategy toolkit organized around how you're feeling when you're stuck, not around dates.
In this episode, Dani talks about why traditional planners fail ADHD brains, how she mapped procrastination by emotion, what tools like "how to half-ass it" look like in practice, and what she learned self-publishing 40,000 pre-orders while running a business with no business background.
If you've ever felt like you were the problem because you couldn't stick with a system, this episode will shift that. You don't need one perfect tool. You need the right tool for the resistance you're facing.
“The problem isn’t that you’re broken. The problem is that you’ve been trying to run on instructions that were never written for your [ADHD] brain.”
- Dani Donovan
“I don’t need one tool. The answer really is having 100 tools.”
- Dani Donovan
“The reason I was able to make this (book) is because I think differently. If things were working for me, I wouldn't have to make a whole book about how to trick my brain into doing stuff.”
-- Dani Donovan
"All we need a lot of the time is just a little push out the door. Once we get started, we'll keep rolling."
-- Dani Donovan
"Picking up and opening the anti-planner means that you've made a decision to do something. And making a decision to want to figure out how to do something is the first step."
- Dani Donovan
"Planners don't fail people with ADHD. Planners just weren't designed for them."
- Dani Donovan
"The things that get you in trouble as a kid will make you famous as an adult."
- Dani Donovan
- Dani shares being told she was too smart to have ADHD and later diagnosed in college after a clinician recognized her communication style
- Struggles with adulting, hygiene, and burnout despite strong academic performance and sorority involvement
- Early graphic design roles, being pushed out of a job after oversleeping once, and later thriving at Gallup with flexible hours
[25:03 – 47:03] Building the Anti-Planner From Scratch
- Quits job in February 2020, funds the Anti-Planner through preorders, and receives 40,000 early orders
- Spends roughly 3,000 hours designing, iterating, and redesigning to eliminate friction and shame
- Organizes the book by emotional resistance categories like stuck, overwhelmed, and unmotivated instead of dates
[47:03 – 01:11:40] Scaling, Self-Trust, and ADHD Strengths
- Navigates managing a growing business, delegation struggles, and rebuilding trust in her intuition
- Shares favorite strategy of using a physical Kanban board on her computer monitor to manage tasks
- Reflects on questioning authority, risk taking, and pattern recognition as ADHD traits driving her success
ADHD isn’t a productivity problem. It’s an identity problem.
That’s why most strategies don’t stick—they weren’t designed for how your brain actually works. Your ADHD Brain is A-OK Academy is different. It’s a patented, science-backed coaching program that helps you stop fighting your brain and start building a life that fits. 👉Learn more here
- The Anti Planner: anti-planner.com
- Instagram: @danidonovan
- Tiktok: @danidonovan
- Facebook: @danidonovanart
- Youtube: @Dani_Donovan
- X: @danidonovan