By Kalena Reynolds | Staff Writer
From improving mental health to growing productivity, dopamine menus are becoming popular amongst the self-help community. Here is an explanation of what it involves and how to implement it into your life.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, dopamine is most notably involved in helping us feel pleasure as part of the brain’s reward system. Sex, shopping, smelling cookies baking in the oven — all these things can trigger a dopamine release, or a dopamine rush.
Because of overstimulation, studies show Generation Z is currently facing low dopamine due to social media, among other things. Dopamine withdrawals can oftentimes manifest as irritability, anxiety or inability to focus.
While this is an unfortunate result of the society we have created, there are multiple different ways to combat this. One method that’s recently gained popularity is the dopamine menu.
To break it down, a dopamine menu is a specialized list of activities, habits or hobbies you can implement either during a task or on its own to combat fatigue or lack of focus and boost pleasure.
Creating a dopamine menu could help you live a smoother, more productive life due to the efficiency of crafting your tasks around the feel-good hormone.
Learning how to structure your day around small dopamine-inducing tasks will not only help you do more complex things for a longer amount of time, but it will also help you stay focused and happy while going throughout your day.
It’s not ideal to live in a world with so much stimulation. By creating a dopamine menu, you are centering your days more sustainably to keep your brain happy and your mind productive.
First, let’s start off with the main entrees. These are the more significant tasks that produce more dopamine.
These include things like exercising, journaling, working on a hobby (crochet, painting), filming a TikTok video or cooking. These tasks are great for long days when you are doing something mentally intensive or when you need a mental refresher. Identifying when you hit the biggest slump during your day and partaking in one of these main entree items could bring you out of that low point in your day and reignite productivity.
There are medium-sized tasks —sides — that make more mundane things like homework or cleaning more enjoyable.
By implementing these sides into your daily routine, you can ensure you get a slight boost while working on separate projects. Ultimately, this helps boost long-term productivity, often centering around producing an experience that appeals to the senses.
This would include listening to a podcast, listening to white noise, lighting a candle or calling a friend.
Other examples of these tasks are phoning a friend while washing dishes or grocery shopping, or lighting your favorite scented woodwick candle for a fun sensory experience while doing homework.
Then you have desserts. These are dopamine-producing items that are best enjoyed in moderation. These could be snacking, scrolling social media, playing video games or watching TV. While these can be smaller tasks, they also produce quicker hits of dopamine with less work.
These tasks can be more challenging to quit, so they should be limited when focusing on productivity and completing a task.
Then you have specials. These things aren’t always obtainable and require more resources and preparation. These tasks include things such as a spa day, going on a vacation or seeing your favorite artist’s concert.
While some of these tasks are more obtainable than others, thinking about what would be on your menu and implementing them within your day can help you live a more productive and healthier life.
By curating your own menu, you can level out your dopamine levels and better understand how to navigate the pleasure center in your brain.
