The Dopamine Menus
Free · print at home
Forty-two small things that actually lift you
Written down in advance, for the days you can't think of a single one.
You know the evening. The children are finally quiet, you've got an hour, and you sit down and do none of the things that would have helped. Not because you didn't want to — because choosing one was a job, and you'd run out of whatever it is you choose with.
A dopamine menu fixes that by taking the choosing out. You write the list on a good day. On a bad day you don't decide anything, you just read.
What you get
A fourteen-page PDF. Eight filled-in menus and two blank ones, laid out like a restaurant menu because that's the joke that makes it stick.
- Four seasons, for grown-ups. Autumn, winter, spring, summer — because what lifts you in February is not what lifts you in July.
- The same four, for children. Written for them, in their language, with a parallel set you can do together.
- Two blank menus at the back, one for you and one for them, because the menu that works is the one with your own things on it.
How a menu is laid out
- Starters — two minutes or less. For the days you've got nothing. Big light off, lamp on. The warmest socks you own.
- Sides — things that go alongside something you were doing anyway. Radio on while you cook.
- Mains — half an hour or more. The ones that genuinely refill you.
- Specials — the season's one-offs. A proper bonfire. Conkers and a long walk.
- Desserts — scrolling, the basket you're not going to buy, one more episode. They taste good and they don't feed you. Naming them does more than banning them ever has.
Get the menus
No form, no confirmation email, no waiting. It opens straight away and prints at home.
Fourteen pages · PDF · free · prints at home
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Who made it
We're an ADHD family — my husband, two children, and me somewhere in the middle of it. He spent twenty-five years as a chef and still couldn't decide what to cook at six o'clock. Nothing we tried stuck, because none of it was built for brains like ours.
So we started building our own. The menus are the first page of it, and they're the part we give away.
We're not at the calm house yet, in case you were wondering. I'm building this in the mess so that one day we get the quiet.