The Setup: Why I Downloaded Yet Another Dopamine Trend
Around early January, my feed started filling up with the dopamine menu trend. You know the one. Everyone was suddenly organizing their lives like restaurants organize menus, sorting activities into appetizers, main courses, and desserts based on how much emotional energy they required. At first, I rolled my eyes the way you do when you see the fifteenth productivity hack of the week.
But here’s the thing about me: I’m the person who keeps a spreadsheet for her houseplants. So when I started reading about how ADHD coach Jaclyn Paul popularized this framework to help people actually take care of themselves instead of doom-scrolling for three hours, something clicked. It wasn’t another optimization scheme. It was permission to plan pleasure. Which apparently I need written down to execute.
The timing made sense too. The APA 2025 Stress in America Report found that 77% of adults are stressed about not having enough meaningful downtime. Seeing that statistic made me feel weirdly validated, like my inability to just “relax” wasn’t a personal failing but a structural problem. If my brain wasn’t going to let me off easy, I was at least going to give it a framework.
What I Actually Built (And Why My Spreadsheet Looks Like It Was Made by an Anxious Accountant)
I didn’t use the cute Notion template everyone was downloading (though the Notion Template Gallery had over 400,000 downloads in February alone). Instead, I made my own spreadsheet with columns for date, activity, category, estimated mood impact, actual mood impact, and what I’ll generously call “notes but it’s really just me complaining.” My friends thought it was hilarious. I thought it was necessary.
The dopamine menu concept itself is simple enough. Appetizers are the quick hits: a five-minute walk, your favorite tea, a funny TikTok. Main courses are the stuff that takes real time and attention: calling a friend, working on a hobby, cooking something good. Desserts are the rare, special experiences: concert, weekend trip, that thing you’ve been saving for. The idea is that when your brain is fried, you know exactly what’s available without having to make decisions.
What I learned immediately was that my menu looked different on paper than it did in real life. I’d put “reading a book” under main courses, but turns out I was too scattered most weeknights. The categories kept shifting. By week two, I was color-coding based on whether activities were solo or social, because it turned out my dopamine profile was less about intensity and more about companionship variables I hadn’t considered. This is the part nobody tells you: building your menu is the easy part. Knowing yourself well enough to categorize what actually works is the real work.
The Data I Didn’t Expect to Care About
By the end of 30 days, I had enough spreadsheet rows to actually see some patterns. A 2025 study in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that people with ADHD who did structured leisure planning reduced their emotional exhaustion by 23% over eight weeks. I didn’t expect to notice anything that clinical in my own tracking, but I did.
Here’s what my spreadsheet actually revealed: on days when I did at least one main course activity intentionally, my anxiety scores dropped measurably. Not eliminated, but noticeably lower. The correlation felt too good to be true, so I kept digging. Days with zero planned activities weren’t necessarily bad, but they were scattered. I’d end them having consumed a lot of content and accomplished nothing, which somehow felt worse than a quiet day where I’d deliberately done something small and nice for myself.
The appetizer items surprised me most. I thought they’d feel trivial, but they didn’t. A 10-minute coffee ritual before checking my phone. A walk around the block with actual attention to the weather. These weren’t filling the deep wells, but they were keeping the wells from going completely dry. They were proof that I didn’t have to wait for the big experience to feel okay.
Who This Is Actually For (And Why You Might Be That Person)
The dopamine menu trend hit 180 million views on TikTok by early 2025, which tells you something about how many people are looking for this kind of framework. But I want to be specific about who actually benefits, rather than suggesting everyone should suddenly spreadsheet their joy.
This is for the person whose brain doesn’t naturally prompt them to take breaks. It’s for people whose anxiety shows up as endless productivity or whose depression shows up as complete shutdown, and they need a middle ground. It’s for the person who has good intentions about self-care but never actually executes because it feels too vague. It’s for anyone who has ever felt weird guilt about taking time for things that feel “unproductive” but are actually necessary.
It’s not really for people who naturally have a good relationship with leisure. It’s not for people who can just decide to relax and then relax. And honestly, it might feel like overkill if your life is running smoothly. But if you’re reading this and thinking “wow, that spreadsheet thing is weirdly relatable,” then I’m telling you: spend an afternoon building your menu. Make it messy. Include the specific songs that make you feel better. Note the time of day that matters. This is permission to get specific about what actually helps you.
What Actually Stuck After 30 Days
I’m still using the spreadsheet. Not in the obsessive way I started, but I glance at it when I feel off-kilter and can’t name why. It’s become less about tracking and more about having a quick reference for “what do I actually feel like doing right now” that doesn’t require me to have energy I don’t have.
The real shift wasn’t in productivity or optimization. It was in permission. Having the menu made it feel acceptable to do the small thing instead of waiting for the big thing. It made it feel okay to spend an evening drawing badly instead of feeling like I should be doing something more meaningful. It made leisure feel like a category of life that deserves actual planning instead of whatever’s left after obligations.
If you’ve been seeing this trend and wondering whether it’s worth trying, I think it depends on whether you’re the kind of person who needs structure to feel free. I definitely am. There’s something about naming what I need and putting it somewhere I can see it that actually changes what I do. Whether that’s the dopamine menu effect or just me finally giving myself permission to be intentional about my own life, I can’t entirely say. But the spreadsheet doesn’t lie, and more importantly, I feel better. That’s the data point that matters.