Ditching the Planner: Consistently Inconsistent with Dani Donovan
Hey team!
This week I’m talking with Dani Donovan, a neurodivergent artist and designer whose ADHD comics have been shared all over the internet. Dani holds a BFA in Visual Communication and Design and is the creator of The Anti-Planner. She’s spent years as an advocate for neurodivergence, using her background in design to simplify those complicated, invisible daily struggles we all face. In our conversation today, we’re diving into why traditional planners often feel like they never work how we want them to and how we can transition into a "toolbox" mindset instead. We explore the concept of "anti-shame" tactics and how to stop using mean-spirited self-motivation. Dani shares some of her favorite hacks for the mundane stuff, like an "Inbox Sprint" for tackling email debt and some unconventional strategies, including how she uses "worst drafts" and even Magic: The Gathering packs to keep herself moving.
Check Out the Anti-Planner: https://www.anti-planner.com/
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/277
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
William Curb: It's really cool to see the anti-planer, and I've been looking through it for the last few days as much as I have to stealing it back from my daughter. But it's not a planner, but as the name implies. So can you tell us a little bit about what it is?
Dani Donovan: The name is confusing to a lot of people, and then it makes complete sense to other people, because I really wanted it to kind of just be like the antithesis of a planner, because I was that girl who was like, I will buy a $60-70 planner, and this is the year that I changed my life, and this is the year that I get my shit together, and this is the year that like, I will be organized, and I know I bought this expensive planner last year and I quit by March, but this year it will be different, and then it's not different. And I miss a page, or I miss a couple days, I go on vacation, or I forget about it, or whatever it is, and I lose that momentum, and now there are blank pages, and I just used to freeze and really get like so perfectionistic about it that it was just really hard to get like back on the wagon.
And I realized that I always ended up quitting because of like the same reasons. And so with the anti-planner, I literally made like a list of here are all of the things. Well, this was actually started as like an ADHD planner. I really was like, how do I make an ADHD planner that like, I will actually stick with. And while I was kind of concepting that out, I found myself using these like super weird strategies to get myself to work on this. And I sort of like looked over here, and I was like, this is what I'm actually doing.
Like this is what's actually working for me, which is coming up with all these like weird, all these weird games. And so then I sort of like stepped back and went, what, what is it about planners that isn't working for me? And it was that they are repetitive and they are like cold and they don't have like instruction beyond just like, here is one template for you to fill out day after day, if that stops working for you, your SOL. And so there was so much like weight and also that it goes bad, like the daily planners I was buying, there are undated planners, but the planners I was buying are like after December 31st, you have to spend more money to like get another one, if you don't want to have to fill out all the dates yourself. And so there was like this sense of it's like a ticking time bomb, almost, and that if you don't, if you blow your chance or you lose it or whatever happens, like it's not an evergreen kind of thing for those day planners. But I loved how I felt when I was in control enough to be using it as a strategy.
But what I didn't really see is that it is just one strategy. It is just one way to get things done is by using like a day planner. And I realized as I was working on it that I was using all these different ways to get things done.
I had like a little, I called it like my field notes guide, and it was just blank pieces of dot grid paper. And I was doing things like coming up with like theme weeks where I was like, I have a bunch of stuff I need to do about finance things, but they're all random. I am going to make 10 checkboxes. And I am going to do 10 things related to finance this week, even if they're tiny.
If I get to the end of the week, and one of these has to be checked by Wells Fargo account, so I could write it down and check it off and have a thing that will be fine, because I will be doing 10 things and anything more than that is like bonus. And so having that like direction was great. But then the next week, I might not want to be like doing that. And so I'd kind of pick up another strategy. And I just looked at how many strategies were sort of like in this binder and flipping through it and really saying, well, what if the strategy is that I've got a bunch of strategies and that the ADHD key is that you don't beat yourself up for not sticking with things, you instead plan on not sticking with things. And the thing that I really tried to do with the anti planner was realizing that like, this is a toolbox. And different tools solve different resistances, solve different problems. And so I kind of say this to people a lot where it's like, if there is if I give you, you know, like a screw and a hammer, and I tell you to get into the wall, like you can tactically do it, but you're not going to have a good time.
And there's a specific tool that is built to match and fix that like solve that specific problem, specific resistance. And so there are so many different reasons why we have a hard time getting stuff done. There are so many different reasons why we think about doing things and don't do them, why that avoidance happens.
And if you're trying to solve all of them with a planner, you're trying to solve all of them with a to do list, it's like you're trying to solve every problem, every resistance you've got with a hammer, and it's not going to work. And we blame ourselves. And I'm like, I'm sick of everybody blaming themselves for this. When we're not the problem, there just weren't things being developed that solved for the problem we were experiencing, which is the not sticking with things part.
William Curb: Yeah, the consistently inconsistent. Yes.
Dani Donovan: Yes. That's just my people. Yeah.
William Curb: I remember the beginning of this year, like, you know, I was getting just deluged with ads for different planners and stuff. And I'm like, that one looks good. And that one looks good. And that one goes good. I'm like, okay, I'm going to decide. I'm like, I don't like any of these. These are all terrible.
Dani Donovan: And or I decide I'm going to fail before I even start. I look at it and I look at the price and I remember how many times I failed. And I'm like, do I want to spend the money on a thing that's just going to make me feel bad about myself? That failure, that baggage is so real.
William Curb: It was funny where I was like, oh, what's that one planner really liked a couple years ago? And I like looked at them. Oh, they went out of business. Okay.
Dani Donovan: Oh, no. A lot of us too. It's like, I don't have you ever tried bullet journaling? Very briefly. Yeah, I loved bullet journaling because I am a designer and I went that direction where it's like, I'm going to spend way too long making this cool, like a different layout every week. And then I'm going to make myself use like I have the reason to use it, which is that I spent so much time making it that like to not use it would be a waste. And that worked for a little while. But I did it. I think I did it for like two or three months.
And like two, two and a half months seems to really be my or like three months is like how long my hobby new hobbies last is like always two and a half to three months. But it was unsustainable. It was the perfectionism like perfectionism is always what gets me. So there are different sections of the book like of the anti planner that help deal with those different resistances. And one of them is perfectionism. And that is the section that I like live and breathe because it is what gets in the way so often.
William Curb: Yeah, it is so easy to fall into that like optimization trap where you're like, I'm going to make this so good. Yes. I can't not use it.
Dani Donovan: And yes, let me over complicate things and avoid by over complication. Yeah.
William Curb: And then you like get through it like, man, I'm overwhelmed now. Yeah.
Dani Donovan: I'm like, I can't just do it the simple basic way that it was designed to be because then I'll have to spend that time doing stuff. And I want to be doing art instead.
William Curb: Too easy to make our systems get in the way of what we want to be doing. But yeah, then we're like, well, then we'll have no system. And then we're like, now I'm doing nothing. Perfect.
Dani Donovan: Yes. I just started tracking my time again. So one of the things that I have not said this anywhere, this is an exclusive an exclusive announcement or something. So I made a quiz in notion that you can take that has the different so each of the sections in the anti planner, it's broken up into like stuck overwhelmed, unmotivated, disorganized and discouraged. And then each of those sections has little sub emotions.
So you have a thing that's like, I need to do my 2025 taxes. And I am having a really hard time. Okay, what's making it difficult? I'm overwhelmed. So you flip to the overwhelmed section.
And then you read the back and it says, how are you feeling? And you know, the first one that comes up is like intimidated, I have so much to do, it's going to take forever. There are too many steps involved.
I'm afraid to even start. And so there are four, you know, there's also over committed and panic to boot out. But that first one intimidated like stands out as, Oh, I relate to this, I relate to these statements. And so that I flip to the intimidated section and boom, there are all of the activities to help me with my task because they are tools designed specifically for the resistance that I'm facing. And that is awesome. I love that. But a lot of people, they, you know, it's like, okay, we'll pick one of these five tabs and they're like, why all of them?
I'm like, all of them all the time. And that's very fair. And so it can be difficult in the moment to sort of figure out necessarily like which one to do. And so I made a quiz where you can click click on them. And it will automatically show you in order here are the 16 subsections ranked by what you scored in all of them.
And so it is a very cool like tool that I developed, I have not talked about or released yet to show you really what you're feeling. But in order to do this, there are two sections disorganized and discouraged the last two sections that only have two subsections each. And in order to make the quiz work, they all had to say have the same number. Because you pretty much rate those like I have so much or I have so much to do and you rate it by like, oh, I feel this way all of the time, or like none of the time and there's, you know, stuff in between there, it's sort of like the like anxiety and depression quiz. And so you, it's an executive dysfunction quiz is what it is.
And so you get to the end. And I needed two new sections for both of these. And so I ended up adding time blind and routine less to the disorganized section and resentful and flooded to the discouraged section.
Because those are reasons that after like, it's been out for like four years now, I think, and there are holes like gaps that I did not, you know, particularly recognize. And it's so interesting because I went and took my own quiz. And I got time blind and routine less as my top things, because those are the problems that I did not build a toolbox to solve.
And so now I'm getting into the mode that's like, all right, those are definitely things I'm struggling with. How could I invent like, what can I invent? What can I try that's already worked? What can I tweak to get on top of these so that I can develop activities for, you know, an anti planner to or or some new digital activities that that are helping with these issues that I'm having, which was lots of other people are also having them. And I started tracking my time again, with like toggle, and like paying a tech, like I just started timer where I'm, you know, doing my task and like stop it and start with the new task. So I have to see at the end of the day, where my time is going. And I have a little timer up at the corner where I look up and if I got distracted, it's like, oh, my God, I've spent four hours doing this, I have almost nothing to show for it.
Like I need to get it together. I've been doing this for four hours. There was a reason why I started on this very long story.
But it was, I think down to the fact that like developing those tools that actually like help us in those moments, this time tracking thing worked for me for like years. And then I just forgot about it. Like I forgot that it existed. I forgot to do it. I stopped doing it.
And now I'm picking it back up again. I'm like, Oh, right. And I think that that's what the anti-planar is. Some people are like, this has some tools in it that they've heard of before as some that I just made up, but they more than anything reminds them of things that they might already know work for them because we forget, you know, I think we know we all have tools, but we forget what they are.
William Curb: Well, 100% like often it feels like, Oh, I need to find a new tool. And it's like, no, I don't need to find a new tool. I need to find a tool that works. Yes.
Dani Donovan: Or remix. That's another thing that I've kind of got is like, how can you I've got little like recommendations in these where it's like pairs well with and then there's other ones because a lot of these it's like, you can take three different tools and mash them together.
And or if you know ones that work with you, you could take other tools and mash them together. So they still feel novel. And your brain still gets that like this is a new thing. I'm not trying to like restart an old thing. Because restarting an old thing is not fun.
William Curb: Yeah, it'd be real tricky, especially if you don't know why it fell apart. Yes. Because sometimes it's just like, Oh, it's not novel anymore. And that's fine. And that's not that hard to pick up again. But sometimes it fell apart because, Oh, this was overly complicated and it was bad.
Dani Donovan: That's just it is if you're able to troubleshoot why a strategy stopped working, if something was working and stopped, and you want to pick that back up again, the key to picking back up again is again, finding the resistance. So if it is, I forgot about it, it's like, how am I going to solve that? If I want to do this again, how am I going to solve that problem?
So that doesn't happen again. How now I have to solve the problem of forgetting it. And then coming up with ideas for how to do that, if I want to incorporate that again, or if it's like, Oh, I got bored, it's how can I reinvigorate it? Or if it's, Oh, it got too complicated, it's like, how do I simplify it? But all of this goes down to just essentially like turning these into like little engineering projects, and little and turning yourself into a science experiment, right, of like, let me try this and see if it works.
And if it doesn't, I'm not a failure, I just have more information about what doesn't work. And so that whole, you know, 1000 ways to make a light bulb or whatever it is, like, figuring out, or what I say sometimes, like, have you played Wordle? I guess it's the same word like hangman are very similar. In that you're doing process of elimination work. And so I think that like, in when I play Wordle, if you type in stuff, and you get letters that are wrong, you don't go, Oh my God, I'm such a failure for guessing five letters that work correct right off the bat. And it's like, no, I just have information about what it isn't. And so that means I'm closer to getting to what is and it's the same thing with strategies is every time I find out that something doesn't work for me, I'm able to sort of like, so long as you're paying attention to what it is, what those failure points are, you can use that data to make things so much easier on yourself.
William Curb: It is a lot of like introspection there where you're like, I do have to understand what I why this stopped, because that also is can inform if you're going to pick up a properly going to stick with any of the tools. Yes.
Dani Donovan: And I kind of forget that the introspection is like a skill that is developed that does not just like, everybody does not instantly go, well, I quit doing this. It's like, why did you quit doing it?
And they just go, I don't know. And and I think that overcoming that internal, I don't know, factor and getting really curious about sitting down and like, what questions do I need to ask myself in order to if I really wanted to figure this out, right? And I think that that's that is the key to so much of this is really deciding that you want to figure it out, that you want to figure yourself out, that you want to figure your productivity out, you want to sort your shit out, like you want, you have to want it. And the hard part sometimes is wanting it. It's like, I want to want it. But I don't I want to play video games, like I want to go play Gup Bonders Gate, I don't want to do, you know, work on this answering emails.
But I want to watch too. And I think that what the anti planner does that I've talked to people about is it is a like a momentum machine to where when you get it out, and you open it, you are so much more likely to start on something, because you have started with the decision that you want to do something. And the first step, isn't the first step of whatever it is you're doing. The first step is the baby step you got, which is opening this book on how to get stuff done.
And so you already I have goosebumps talking about my stupid stuff, but it's like that you have already, you have already started your journey has already become and now you just have to lean into the momentum. And I think a lot of us with ADHD, we rely on that momentum. And as we know, it's like, if I take a break, this task is dead to me, like getting myself to restart something is is really painful. So that's why I'm like, I forget to stand up and go eat and drink water and go to the bathroom and do all this stuff. Because it's like, if I am in the zone, please do not break me from the zone. Who knows if I'll be able to get back here.
William Curb: Oh, yeah, that is always the worst where you're like, don't don't get it done. I'm done.
Dani Donovan: Yeah, take frequent breaks. I'm like, okay, no, you don't know me at all. Okay.
William Curb: And then how do I come back from the break? How do I make sure the break doesn't go beyond like a five minutes? Yes.
Dani Donovan: And so that's the thing that I have. There are so many things that I didn't make it into the anti planner. And so like, it's really hard because right now, so I self published this book.
And I running a company and figuring out like the logistics of of how to get this into warehouses and you know, deal with like, I've got counterfeits that we had to like figure out how to take down counterfeit listings and like, all of these business logistics and all I want to do is like come up with strategies all day and design stuff. And I realized that some of the stuff that I was doing like just didn't like make it into the book. And so one of the things was like setting reminders that don't suck. And one of the things was how to take breaks that don't break your focus.
I really often like wish that some of these had had made it in there. But so much of it is like, okay, well, I'm just going to walk laps around like I used to go to a co working space. And I would just like walk laps around with like music. So like a walking break, where I don't let myself go anywhere, like I can't do it in the house. If I walk around the house, it's like, Oh, a cat, Oh, a task to do. But if you're just what you have to walk in a place where there's nothing you can get distracted by, you know, and that's not always not always easy. But that goes back to the troubleshooting of go for a walk is different. If you go for a walk and a walk doesn't work as a break, is it because you went for a walk in a place with distractions? Okay, well, I got distracted.
How do I solve for that problem? I need to go for a walk in a place where I won't be distracted. And so I just it's problem solving, like real big on my dad was an engineer, so I can't help it.
William Curb: Well, and another thing I really noticed in the book too is I thought it was like a lot of like anti shame tactics in there. Yes. Yeah. Because I feel like that's a big part of that troubleshooting thing too is that we're like, I can't do this. I'm a bad person. And it's like, whoa, that's so down there.
Dani Donovan: Or we've learned to motivate ourselves by being mean to ourselves. Because other people being mean to us motivated us. Other getting in trouble motivated us. So we're like, if I can convince myself I'm in trouble, or if I can convince myself that I'm not even convinced myself, like that I'm mad at me, I am mad at me. I don't I think that people without ADHD don't necessarily realize how much time that it's like, oh, you're you think you're frustrated with me? I'm frustrated with myself 24 seven. Like I'm trapped in here, like I don't get to leave. And I'm in this situation where I want to be doing things, and I'm not doing them, or I don't want to be doing things.
And I am doing them. And like, that's where dysfunction is. That's what the D that the last D in there is is a disorder. Because I I want to get myself to do stuff that I'm not doing. I want to get myself to stop doing something that I can't stop doing. And and that lack of like what feels like agency, like that lack of control, almost of like, I'm not, it feels like I'm not in the driver's seat. It feels like I'm like, I've got a, you know, eight year olds driving this car, and I'm watching the eight year old like drive my car and to, you know, like, into into it, like, ditch almost and being able to watch it happen in slow motion and feel like powerless almost and then to feel like that have a bunch of feelings about my feelings of powerlessness where it's like, I'm not powerless, I know I'm not, but I don't want it bad enough to like get it. And we keep convincing ourselves that motivation is the problem. And like sometimes motivation is the problem, but like a lot of the times it is that like, shame factor that's holding us back because we're not doing things because we love ourselves and think that we deserve good things. We're doing stuff because we I'm saying we like very liberally, this is obviously not every person with ADHD experience. I think that there are lots of people who have had plenty of therapy and are, you know, aware of their own stuff. But but for many of us, prior to getting help to kind of take ourselves out of that mindset of I am broken, I am wrong, I am not doing things right, I am not doing enough, I am not enough. And and it takes a lot of work to step back and look at it and say, there's a reason I'm struggling.
If I could figure out the reason that I could solve for it. And the reason is it just me, like, I think that's the self blame part of like, I am the problem. It's like, no, this is the problem. This right here is the problem. You are not the problem.
William Curb: Yeah, because often it's just like, oh, there's some disconnect in one of the steps. And if I just fix that one little issue, I know my wife was having really a ton of trouble cleaning this one room. And I'm like, oh, I just need to like get this one thing. She's like, oh, let me pick this up thing. And then like three hours later, she's like, I need you to help me stop cleaning this room.
Dani Donovan: I feel that in my bones. It's like, oh, no, I've started, I can't stop. But then you do the or you do the thing where it's like, I start, I started cleaning and I'm really excited because I'm deep cleaning and I've been meaning to deep clean.
But I took all the stuff down, right, in order to do it. And now I've run out of steam and I look around and it's dirt. It's messier than it was when I started because I started reorganizing and now it's like, oh, well, I've destroyed it. And now I need to go to bed and I get up tomorrow. Now there's like even bigger mess.
William Curb: Yeah, I'll be like, man, I, I made a huge mistake here.
Dani Donovan: Yeah, I've made a huge mistake. So I think this through. Well, and it's, it's one because you want to know, I have a theory about why we leave spaces kind of get messier and messier until it reaches like an all of us have different anxiety thresholds of at what point is my brain go enough, you know, and like has to do something about it or panic cleaning because people are coming over or something like that, which is again, shame motivation. But there's a certain level where I'm like, okay, I got to do something about this. It's often because like, I can't focus. It is so messy in here that I can't focus and I need to focus.
And also what a convenient excuse for me to now not focus on the thing because I have a new thing to focus on. So it's like, I want to clean as procrastination or procrastinating, or now it's gotten bad enough that it feels like a project. And I will get brain chemicals from the before and after because I get to look at it and go, oh, I'm so proud of myself because I don't get proud of myself for like tidying up for like, I didn't used to proud myself for like tidying up for three minutes. That does not feel like an achievement, but going from messy to clean feels like an achievement. And therefore is much more interesting to my brain.
William Curb: Yeah, I remember seeing the celebrating small wins and the discouraged category. Yes.
Dani Donovan: And it's like finally hung up that poster. And not just like had a bunch of posters just like rolled up in the corner like I'll get a frame for that eventually. The biggest lie I tell myself I'll go buy frames. And then it's like, if I even ever get the frame, it's like putting, buying a frame for something, putting it up instead of leaning it against the wall.
There's all these like little teeny steps. And so I had to think for like, this thing I was working on called strugglebusters that had how to blank when you don't feel like it. And one of the things was like, hang it up because it's secretly like, I don't want to do this wrong.
I have to pick the right place. I have to, I have to make sure it's straight or, you know, I don't have the tools to do it. Like there's all of these little tiny little obstacles that get in the way. And so being able to learn how to, to spot those obstacles. And this goes back to the like introspection thing of this is practice, like it takes practice over and over again, to get really curious when something quote unquote like fails, because you are able to stop and like, when you troubleshoot over and over again, you're making like an operating manual for your brain of like, when this happens, we do this. When I can't remember to do something, I put a sticky note on my phone, and I don't let myself take it off my phone until I've done that thing, even if it's annoying, right?
Like it is the sticking out lives on my phone until this thing is done. And if, and as soon as I break that rule, this won't work anymore. So the rule is like, I know, once I let myself off the hook once, this will be poof, this, this, this strategy will no longer work.
And so in order to do that, it means I can't use it often. Because if I use that strategy super often, the higher the likelihood that I'm going to, to cave and, you know, not do that. And so like, there are certain things where I realize, because I know from prior experience, if I do something too many times, my likelihood to like, you know, cut myself slack and, and break the rules is higher. And so it's similar to like the treat yourself kind of like activity in the unmotivated section, where I will bribe myself with like magic packs, booster packs, and, and put a little post note on it. That's like, after I do this thing, I get this pack, I bribe myself again, like I'm a kid, and it totally works. And people go, Well, how do you just not open the packs? And I go, because I know when I do that once, this will be dead to me. And I can't use this anymore. And I like using it. But I, it's know thyself.
William Curb: Yeah, it's very much like, yeah, if, like, how do you do it? Like, well, if, if I didn't, it would be worthless. And I don't, and I want it to have worth. Yeah.
Dani Donovan: And I don't have discipline. Like I would say I, I quit. I keep air quoting, but I feel like I don't have discipline, but stuff like that does require a certain level of like making an agreement with yourself. Because I think the reason why so much of this is hard is we don't trust ourselves because we make promises to ourselves and then we break those promises or we make promises to other people and then we break those promises. And so we don't think of ourselves as reliable or we feel that other people think that we're unreliable because we don't often do the things we say we're going to do or we don't do the things we tell ourselves we're going to do.
So it's like why should you have to build that self-trust back? And part of that is by not asking too much of yourself and not like to be like lower your expectations. But when you when you lower the bar like significantly lower the bar for what you are expecting yourself to do a you are going to reach what that thing is.
And so you don't feel like you failed. But everything beyond that is like I'm a rock star who did way more than I had to. And that makes me feel good versus if my bar for what I expected was like way, way higher up I anything less than that.
Like I could do the same amount of work and I wouldn't feel excited about it. Now that might not again that might not work for everybody because you know some people think well if I lower my bar that I'm going to be okay with accepting less. And it's like well is having that super high bar working for you right now? Or is it just making you feel bad about yourself? Because if it's just making you feel bad about yourself then maybe try something else. If it is working like by all means continue you know continue on. I can't yeah I'm happy for you man.
William Curb: Yeah that is really often a funny thing where you're like well I don't want to do that because that wouldn't work. It's like well it's what you're doing working. Yes. And too often people are like well no but it's if I just did X it's like well you're not though. Yeah. We have to live in reality.
Dani Donovan: The biggest lie that I tell myself is like is that spending money on things will make me do stuff. Because sometimes it works like right away and then sometimes it doesn't but I feel like I have the same problem is when I go like to Barnes & Noble and I'm like I am going to buy eight books and read none of them versus if you go and you buy like one book and you know you decide on like one thing and I think that that like biting off more than I can chew because I'm over ambitious is again a trend that I've got in my life because if one thing is good eight things is eight times good. What can go wrong?
William Curb: The little doba meaning is like oh I'm going to get this one and I feel so good at the time.
Dani Donovan: Yes, I have a new strategy. You can't take me into a Barnes & Noble like it is a running joke in my family that you can't let Danny into a Barnes & Noble, or take everything away, you know, take away my phone take away everything, like I just can't help it. I found out this strategy that I kind of like made up for myself where I take pictures like because I'll see a book and I'm like I want this this looks so good and I'll just grab it and carry it around and then by the end of it it's like I'm carrying around all these books so I'm going to buy them because I'm not going to go put them all back and what I've started doing is I will take a picture of the front cover of the book on my phone and then I will walk to the next thing I'll take a picture and then at the end when it's like time to go or time to check out I go are there books in my head that I am like thinking to myself I want to make sure I go grab that and then I will go back and get that book and then the other books that I don't I have a little album on my phone called Books to Read and I add those so that I can remember to either like look them up later to potentially you know get them from the library or if I want to you know go back to a Barnes & Noble one to like check it out later you can but like I feel like that I'm going to forget that this book exists is one of the reasons why I want to buy it so I found now that like the if you document it it also feels good to my brain not you know and I technically have just as much value as like buying it and not reading it yeah.
William Curb: because it's often so much like FOM, O like I'm going to miss out if I don't, 't yeah, it's like well I'm going to also miss out if I buy it, never look at it again
Dani Donovan: yes and I'm like an audiobooks person so like getting the physical copy is like having like a trophy you know it's like the film but I use them as like decoration so I do I do justify it to myself that like well at least it'll look really good on my shelves but like how to read how to do stuff when you don't feel like it a lot of people think that that only means tasks that are like unpleasant and or that they have to do and it's like no I can't get myself to do hobbies I can't get myself to read like I can't get myself to do things that like I do want to do and because my attention span is shot so it's like well I could be doing this or I could be watching TikTok and I feel like we've gotten so easily you know and I feel a certain way when people you know are always talking about like how short are everybody's attention spans have gotten but it is true because I just don't get the same level of brain chemies from reading a book or like reading a story as I do watching watching a story sometimes you know and so I have to like how do I get myself to do this thing that I know I like doing that's one of the things that the anti-planet can also do is to people don't think about using it to do hobbies but like things that bring you joy are also important it's not just about here's how to force yourself to do stuff that you hate
William Curb: yeah I remember doing a like uh online co-working session and the person's like I'm gonna be uh crocheting and watching a TV show during my session because I don't do that enough, and I'm like fan cast a huge amount of time.e I love that's amazing
Dani Donovan: what are there things that you particularly are like repetitive like repetitively struggle with as far as um for me like communication is really difficult I suck at replying to texts it is a known thing like I have I I think the highest I think the highest I got up to was like almost like 700 on red text once you get to those numbers it's so like intimidating and everything feels like a tiny little obligation and yeah um as are the things like that that you would just find yourself
William Curb: replying to emails is definitely one of them like I have I uh I do do some like email debt forgiveness where I'm just like about bankruptcy I can't I'm not gonna respond to anything after this date because yeah sorry uh yeah yeah it's I mean it feels so bad when I'm just like man I it's not even hard to reply to some of them like I'm like oh this took like two seconds and I'm like but it's just for whatever reason my brain's like no
Dani Donovan: thousand percent I don't I hate emails also because and some of it was like I want to make sure that I reply in like the perfect way so that I don't accidentally come off the wrong way and then for a while there it was like but then I was replying everything with exclamation points and that's apparently bad you know to the explanation point yeah my emoji and that's what I do and then I got I got this thing in my head about why I shouldn't be doing that which is so dumb like I should not be I'm like self judging myself based off of other people's judgments when like I don't care and I love when people give me exclamation points and emojis because I'm like oh my god you're not mad at me and so uh you know but it there's a lot of like self judgment or the perfectionism that comes with that.
But I find that which is interestingly enough I don't know if you've gotten to it yet so in the perfectionism section there is an activity called inbox sprit and it's about answering emails as fast as you can and so it's got like the like a 10 by 10 grid and uh you know I say like use a pencil or a raceable pen so you can like reuse it but it's got numbers one through a hundred and it's like if you've got if you're like I want to try and answer 40 emails you know you put a little thing by the 40 and you set a timer and you see how fast you can reply how fast you can reply to 40 emails and you check off each little each little inbox like each little email that you answer or archive or delete is a little box and so you get the brain I keep saying brain chemicals but like you get the satisfaction of of crossing something off like that little micro hit of achievement and so then you get to the end and the challenge makes it interesting and awful but the time crunch makes it so I don't spend 40 minutes writing an email I cannot tell you how many times I'm like I will make this the most beautiful like best formatted email anybody has ever seen and it doesn't matter but my brain convinces me like it matters so much that this is the like easiest to understand that anybody has ever seen.
William Curb: yeah you'll spend like 40 minutes, es and you'll get a reply. Sounds good, yes, and you're like oh my god, that's what I wanted but also I hate it.
Dani Donovan: yeah and I'm at the point now where it's like I've got like a hundred and like over a hundred thousand people on my mailing list which is ridiculous but like I don't send emails I simply pay a ridiculous like a ridiculous amount of money to hold this many emails and to be able to send out an email every six months telling people something but like writing emails to reply to people and writing emails to like a bunch of people like the I and I like writing so and I love talking to people it's like the asynchronous thing versus being in person where it's like cool I'm in the moment like on a podcast interview on a FaceTime call on a phone call I'm in the moment I'm here I'm doing it I'm communicating this is great and then I'm done and then you walk away and you can move on to the next task it's not something that follows you around all day like an email thread or a you know text message
William Curb: writing is another one of those things where it's like I need to do it regularly because I'm I used to do a lot of monologue episodes for the podcast and then I kind of like shifted to doing more interviews but I'm like I want to do more monologues again and then I'm like I like started writing earlier this year I'm like I really like this I need to do this more like I yeah need this
Dani Donovan: I have such a hard time like monologuing is fun I would do that occasionally where it's like oh I I wanted to do like get ready with me things like I tried to do like a TikTok live one time I think and you know they do their makeup and and talk I cannot multitask like that I will simply start talking and just not do makeup like I can only do one or the other I have no idea how these people do both but then I I'll like record this big long thing and then I don't do anything with it and I realized that what would be awesome would be to just like take that monologue and get a transcript from it and then turn that into something versus like sitting down and trying to think like what do I want to write today
William Curb: and you get these showing me places where yeah that's the like the stuck and I'm like oh the way I get unstuck for writing is I pretend I'm not writing and I'm writing about writing and I just like do like a little pre-write thing I'm like what am I going to write about and I'm like I'm gonna write about these things these are the ideas I want to do and then like that just like warms me up and gets me into it
Dani Donovan: yeah because you're going in with the like lowest uh so there's there's a thing in the book in the stuck section called like task adjacency which is like if you can't get yourself to do your dishes stand in front of your sink and turn on the state like in front of your dishes and turn on the sink and you're like I'm gonna stand here for a minute and and just let the water go I don't have to do the dishes but I'm gonna stand here and you'll get so bored that you will like start doing the dishes right or like I don't have to go to the I want to go to the gym or like I used to go swimming right much more frequently than I do now and it was winning looks like putting on my swimsuit underneath my clothes and getting in the car with like with my stuff like I technically technically don't have to go to the gym I what my bar is you know what I was talking about like putting the bar on the ground the bar is having my swimsuit underneath my clothes and getting in my car and there are there were like two there have been like two times where I've done that and gone you know what like no like not not right now I did my thing and I'm not but the majority of the time once you put yourself in the environment with everything you need and it's like the hard parts over you've ripped off the band-aid
William Curb: yeah you just need to build that little bit of momentum,m and yeah, ah, I do think that it is very important, though,h that you have that, at like, yeah,h you know what, that momentum didn't happen,n I'm gonna go back
Dani Donovan: yeah and I still won because the the the thing that I made what the winning like make your win con easier make make the the thing that winning looks like easier and it's something that takes again a lot of practice and I think that the self-forgiveness on top of like the anti-shame that like so much of the book is like hey even here's how to speed clean your place you know go around with the trash bag and just throw away all of the trash in all of the areas of your home go around and grab all of the dishes from all of the areas and put them in your you know thing and then go around and grab all of the clothes and put all of the clothes anywhere in your hamper and and then there's like some other stuff it's like if that's all you get done that is such a win or even if you just do one of those things like that is such a win because the alternative was like not doing anything and anything is better than nothing
William Curb: yeah, and I think that's so important for people to internalise, like anything worth doing is worth doing poorly,y you don't need to do it amazing
Dani Donovan: yeah I mean, I say that, and it's like anything I don't care about is worth doing poorly,y anythi, ng and you know, as soon as I try to do something I do care about, only my brain's like you definitely where I'm just killing with fire
William Curb: yeah if I tried to put like my pre-rights out, it's like,e well, I did that poorly,y and uh, yeah,h well, just I'll just record that, and I'm like no ne, ver that would people don't need to see that part of my brain
Dani Donovan: yeah I think that there's so much for the like the thing that I picked up from Kate who was the consultant that I was working with I really loved working with was the concept of a first draft worst draft and so instead of just calling something first like first draft you know or some people say like shitty first draft or whatever it is if you label your first version of something with the word like worst draft and it gives me like permission to let it be bad because I literally titled it at the top first draft first draft and so it takes that intimidation factor away and I think so much of what helps me because intimidation is like my biggest thing even being intimidated by things that are not that big of a deal um because it feels like this big fire breathing dragon and and it's gonna you know be so hard and then once you're in it and you're able to be like I just have to make a bad version of this and then I will tweak that bad version because then I won't have the empty page problem yeah and so there's sometimes that I've got people who are like hey do you want me to write like a really bad version of this and then you could go in and change everything about it and so if you're having if you have like an important thing to do and you've got a friend that's like I will I will spend 15 minutes right you know writing a bad version of this for you like I do like task swapping also which is where you like do something that is for someone else which is infinitely easier than doing something for yourself and so it's like can we trade trades tasks and so writing bad first draft is something for someone just so you can hand it back and you go oh I didn't know what I want I know I don't want this but this made me realize what I do want and then you then you then it's easier because you're like well I'm not sending that but I will send this
William Curb: yeah absolutely, because it is like that,t like oh, I didn't know what I want,t but yeah, it is really not this,s this is so bad
Dani Donovan: I feel like a bad client when I was like a designer, and they would ask what they want, and they don't know what they want until they see something,g and they're like not that and I'll know it when I see it, which is difficult
William Curb: Yeah,t's that's very difficult to design for
Dani Donovan: yes but that's the same thing with like the perfectionism what makes it hard to stop so like I there is a there is a thing that like clicks into place when I when I get something and I like crushed it don't need to work on it anymore that's what I wanted like I feel good about it I can walk away and like and it's done until I get that click feeling and I'm familiar with what that click feeling feels like if I'm not having the click feeling it's not done and especially if I care about like it's not done until I can look at it and don't have any criticisms left for it and that's how my brain is is like I will sit there and critique my own stuff and critique my own stuff and critique my own stuff because then no one out and I realize this is a coping mechanism so that no one else can criticize me because good luck being harder on me than I am on myself
William Curb: yeah and then someone does point something out, you're like
Dani Donovan: no yeah not okay that doesn't happen to me being able to kind of like get to a point where I'm I the perfectionism thing is fear it is like fear and a little tuxedo and fear of failure but fear of judgment fear of judgment for myself or judgment from other people and not doing my best feels like a crime like I am the like do your you know just do your best I'm like I will do my best and I have been told I was a hashtag gifted kid and I will meet my potential and everyone expects a lot from me because in the past I have done awesome stuff and that means that everything I make has to be awesome because otherwise they'll know that I'm not trying
William Curb: yeah like my best means I'm gonna work until I am the wheels of,f ye, ah there's nothing left, and it's like, o,h I just meant just do a good j, ob it's like that's not what you s, aid you said do your best, which is very clearly a different thing
Dani Donovan: Yes and I think that the biggest back to the like picking my battles thing um is that picking my battles as to what I will let myself be perfectionistic about because I care about it that much or the stakes are that high so like writing an email to you know a list of 100,000 people is a lot of pressure and and being perfectionistic about like delivering bad news like that anti-planet was like running behind because I just because I was being perfectionistic about it and I had a paid I had a spread like a truth or dare spread that I was like this is one of the last ones I have to do and I couldn't get myself it was this it's this page and I couldn't I couldn't get the lettering right and then I stumbled into a lettering style that I was like oh my god I love this I love this and then I looked at the rest of the book and I go but now this is better than the other stuff so now I need to redo the other stuff to match because at this point I'd had like 10,000 pre-orders like or like like 15,000 pre-orders so I knew it was going to get big and I'm like if everyone's going to see this I need to make it as good as I can and so then I went through and I used this coloring style for like the whole book and I made I made so much more work for myself and I'm I'm happy I did the book turned out way better because of it but I had to send out an email telling people that it was going to be later than I expected and I never really did pre-orders I had never done Kickstarter before you know and I didn't do it through Kickstarter so like I was just very unfamiliar with the fact that like a lot of pre-orders run behind like most most pre-orders are from people who didn't know how long it was going to take.
So I didn't know that was normal but I spent so I spent like eight hours writing this one email but the stakes were very high and so that was one of the things that's like the because the how I deliver this news will impact if people are like screw you I want my money back or oh my god like you're totally fine and I spent a lot of time making sure that I explained to people that like exactly like exactly what happened that the the the this is the conundrum I find myself in and then I feel like scared and anxious and ashamed like just being really upfront about it um but that that is not the same like because I've done that because I got I got hundreds of replies from people like this is the best email I've ever read and I go cool no pressure for me for future emails um and so it's like if I crushed it out of the park it feels like everything I do from that point forward like I don't want to have peaked and same thing with the anti-plated it's like everyone like everyone but most people that I talked to it's got like 4.9 stars on my tiktok you know shop it's got a lot of people who love it and I'm like did I peak everything that I that I released from now on it's like I'm going is going to be measured against this I'm going to measure against this um and so if it's not great I don't follow it up with something you know like it feels like the sequel like the sequel is always not as good as the original and so I'm like what if I just never made a sequel and just worked on a bunch of different sequels and then never released them and just wasted a bunch of time making stuff and not releasing it you know.
William Curb: I've seen 10 better people, so
Dani Donovan: that's true shrek 2 is a delight no the first one's still classic but anyway I I feel that the perfect I talked about perfectionism so much but I do know that a lot of people don't realize that so many people with ADHD have it because again that fear of criticism yeah and that fear of making mistakes is just like I will make this so good and also I need praiseforr my self-worth to like live is how it was for a lot of time where I'm like I need external validation to feel good about myself and that can be such a challenge because when you don't get that that's when you end up in the discouraged section of I'm feeling insecure because I'm not getting that validation so like learning to give yourself the validation is definitely a challenge
William Curb: yeah there is just so much stuff in here that is really good, and as you know, as we talked about, the beginning, it's you know, all the every day is going to be different challenge for us, then or maybe not every day, but at least every week
Dani Donovan: yeah and it's sometimes it's the same thing,g sometimes it's different
William Curb: So, so I was wondering if you had any final thoughts that you wanted to leave the audience with
Dani Donovan: the main thing that I try to get across to people a lot of time is that like you are not lazy like I hate the word lazy I hate it so much and it's very easy to stop that label on other people who are not meeting expectations it's so easy to stop on yourself when you feel like you're not living up to your own expectations or other people's expectations taking the I have a personal defect I am I have a character flaw same thing goes with ADHD as with you know struggling with productivity is just if you are able to to kind of become much more objective and zoom out what's the thing that they say with like headspace the app Andy you know it says like it's the difference between like being out in a thunderstorm and feeling all of the wind and all of the rain and being inside behind behind a window watching a thunderstorm and if you are able to sort of find some of that objectivity it is what causes that self-compassion because you can see like I not just be like I'm a person struggling it's like I see a person struggling and if this was my friend what would I say to them because there's no way I'm going to be as mean to my friend as I am to myself so be nice to yourself and that's easier said than done but it goes a long way
William Curb: All right well thank you so much for coming on the show. There's so much in here, and I'm sure a lot of people are going to be like I think I need this book
Dani Donovan: Oh yeah, you can get it anti planner.com,
William Curb: Awesome
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