A dopamine menu is a pre-built list of activities that help you break the spiral when you're stuck, dysregulated, or can't start anything. The key is building it when you're okay — not when you need it.
Here's what usually happens when an ADHD brain hits a wall: you sit there. Or you doom-scroll. Or you open seventeen tabs. Or you just stare at the task with a specific kind of paralysis that looks a lot like laziness but is actually closer to a nervous system shutdown. You know you need to do something. You can't figure out what that something is. The not-deciding makes everything worse.
A dopamine menu is a way out of that loop — and the reason it works is simple. It removes the decision.
What's a Dopamenu, exactly?
A dopamine menu (Dopamenu) is a personalised list of activities you've selected in advance — things that reliably give you a small dopamine hit, help you regulate, or break you out of a stuck state. You build the list when your brain is functional. When it's not, you don't have to think. You just open the menu and pick one thing.
The activities aren't random. They're sorted by how much effort they take:
Tiny (2 minutes): a glass of water, three deep breaths, stretching your arms above your head. Small enough that you can actually do them when everything feels impossible.
Quick (5–10 minutes): put on a hype song and move, step outside, make a hot drink, tidy one small area. A bit more, but still low-friction.
Reset (15–20 minutes): a short walk, lying down and doing nothing, writing whatever's in your head. These take more but they also reset more.
Recharge (30 minutes plus): a run, cooking something from scratch, a creative project. For when you have capacity and want to come back genuinely refreshed.
The point isn't to be productive. The point is to interrupt the spiral with something real — something that gets your nervous system out of the freeze state and back into a place where starting is possible again.
Why it works for the ADHD brain specifically
ADHD is fundamentally a problem of dopamine regulation, not willpower. When you're dysregulated — overwhelmed, stuck, shutdown — your prefrontal cortex is not your friend. Decision-making tanks. Options feel overwhelming. The question "what should I do to feel better?" requires exactly the cognitive resources the dysregulation has already taken offline.
A pre-built menu sidesteps all of that. The work of deciding happened when your brain was functioning. Now you just scroll and pick.
There's also something important about having your own list versus someone else's suggestions. Generic self-care advice ("go for a walk!") often bounces off when you're dysregulated because it doesn't feel personally relevant. When the list is yours — your go-to songs, your specific kind of outside, your version of a quick reset — it's stickier. Your brain recognises it as a known thing that works, which lowers resistance.
Building a Dopamenu that actually helps you
The mistake most people make is building a menu that looks good on paper rather than one that works for them specifically. Helpful principles:
Include things that are embarrassingly easy. Washing your face, drinking water, standing up — these are not "cheating." When you're in a bad state, starting small is the entire point. A tiny win is still a win, and it's far better than another twenty minutes in the spiral.
Don't include things you "should" do. If you put "meditate for 30 minutes" on your menu but you've never successfully meditated when dysregulated, it's just another thing to fail at. Only list things that have actually worked for you before.
Include a range of effort levels. Some days the wall is high and only a tiny thing will get through. Other days you have more capacity and something bigger will feel genuinely good. Build for both.
Update the list over time. What works in March might not be what works in September. Swap things in and out as you learn more about your own patterns.
Try the Dopamenu tool
We've built a free Dopamenu tool as part of the BrainFu Toolbox. It lets you toggle on pre-loaded suggestions (sorted by effort level), add your own activities, and build a personal reset menu that syncs to your account — so it's there when you open it on any device.
When you're stuck, you just open it and pick one thing. That's the whole idea.
It works alongside the other tools in the Toolbox — Unstuck (task paralysis rescue), Go Mode (visual focus timer), and Feed Mode (dinner decider). Free, no credit card, installs to your phone.
If you want a deeper system for managing ADHD at work — tracking your energy patterns, building routines that actually stick — the Easy Mode ADHD Toolkit is a good next step. AU$17, instant download.