There is a sheet of paper people call a dopamine menu. Like a restaurant menu, it sets your own small pleasures out by course. When you cannot decide what to do, you look at the sheet and pick one instead of thinking it through. That is the entire tool.
Let us be clear about the footing first. This page does not claim that the sheet does anything to you. Nor does it assert where the idea came from: we have not been able to confirm the origin in a reliable primary source, so we do not state one. What follows is only what kind of document it is and how to build one that actually gets used.
Why a menu rather than a list
Everyone has written a list of things they would like to do. The trouble with an ordinary list is that it runs in one column, and on a tired day reading from the top is itself the chore.
Putting it in menu form changes two things. First, the course reaches your eye before the contents do, so you can decide "just an appetizer today" and only then look inside. Second, a duration sits next to each line, exactly as a price does on a real menu, so you choose from what you can afford — which here means the time you actually have.
The five courses
The division in common use has five parts, and the maker in this park follows it.
- Appetizers — done immediately, or within a few minutes. Thirty seconds to five.
- Entrees — take real time and leave you full. Half an hour to a few hours.
- Sides — things that run alongside whatever else you are doing.
- Desserts — small ones, where deciding the quantity in advance helps.
- Specials — the rare treat. Not an everyday thing.
There is no correct boundary between courses. The same walk is an appetizer at five minutes and an entree at an hour. Sort by the time you can spend.
How to make one, in three steps
- Start from an example. Filling a blank page is the hardest version of this task. The Dopa Menu Maker carries six worked starting points — student, working from home, with small kids, night owl, living alone and later years — and one press fills the whole card. Deleting and adding from there finishes far faster.
- Pick from the list, then write your own. Each course offers more than twenty suggestions; one press puts one on the menu. When you want your own wording, there is a field for up to forty characters.
- Choose a look and take it away. Five looks: chalkboard, kraft paper, neon, washi paper and plain white. Save it as a picture, or open the print page and put it on one sheet of A4.
Three worked examples
One — for evenings that keep dissolving
- Appetizers: put the kettle on / open a window / thirty seconds of puchi
- Entrees: ten pages of the book you started / tidy the kitchen with the radio on
- Sides: one album's worth of a favorite record while washing up
- Desserts: one ice cream / three short videos, maximum
- Specials: on Fridays only, take the long way home
Two — for sitting down all day at home
- Appetizers: stand up and roll your shoulders / step outside for the air / three glasses of tokutoku
- Entrees: half an hour's walk in the late afternoon / a long bath at the weekend
- Sides: change the working music / clear exactly one corner of the desk
- Desserts: one coffee from slightly better beans
- Specials: once a month, a film on a weekday afternoon
Three — for the hour after the children are asleep
- Appetizers: take the lights down a notch / a minute of munyu
- Entrees: one recorded episode / write in the notebook
- Sides: the radio while folding laundry
- Desserts: one sweet thing, just one
- Specials: stay up late, but only when tomorrow is free
Put one thirty-second item in the appetizers and the menu is far more likely to become a sheet that gets used, because it cuts down the visits where you open it and close it again having done nothing. In the maker, the appetizer tab lists all twelve toys directly, and anything you put there can be played from the menu screen itself.
About saving and sharing
Your menu is kept in this browser only. Nothing goes to a server. You can create a share link, but everything after the # in a URL is never sent to a server by design, so handing the link around does not put the contents of your menu on the wire. Clearing your browsing data clears the menu with it.
If you want it on paper, use the print page. It is built to fit one portrait A4 sheet and gives every line a tick box. It reads fine in black and white, so it works stuck to a fridge and crossed off by hand.
A few things that help when writing one
- Do not put chores on it. The washing-up and the tax return will both try to get on. The moment they do, the sheet becomes a schedule.
- Nothing that needs a purchase belongs in the appetizers. An appetizer has to be available right now, empty-handed.
- Do not let it get long. Four to six per course is plenty. A menu you cannot choose from has defeated itself.
- Expect to rewrite it. Seasons change and so do you. Change the sheet, not yourself.