Holistic health first in order of helpfulness to make dopamine production naturally available:

1. Sleep (enough and consistent). It takes a long time for me to fall asleep, so I need 9 hours in bed for 7.5-8 hours a night. Adjust accordingly.
2. Hard workout in the morning (alternating cardio and weight lifting). This works for a lot of reasons, but I find working out in the morning and giving my brain time to wake up very helpful. Weight lifting specifically helps ADHD.
3. Protein focused diet. Nutrition’s critical! Protein’s necessary for your brain to produce dopamine and your body to function. You very likely aren’t getting enough: most athletic aka healthy people need .8-1x grams of protein per their body weight in pounds.
4. Therapy, journaling, applying emotional regulation skills. Do what works for you here.
5. Nature walks in the day. Focus on what you’re proud of and inject some positivity.
6. Mindfulness Meditation: I don’t do this one yet but it’s another top-ranked ADHD solution.
7. Sugar/caffeine/+ crashes: it’s important to be careful to avoid energy crashes in the day because nothing starves your mind and willpower like desperately needing a nap. Basically, when you notice a crash, trace back to why it happened and try to reduce/avoid it in the future. Like if you had 3 candy bars and passed out/struggled two hours later, notice it, and make a rule for yourself to have no more than 2 candy bars at a time in the future.
8. Give your brain a break at regular intervals like meal times. You can’t push forever. You might hyper focus for 10 hours but good luck keeping that up consistently enough for a job, hobby, or just forcing yourself into living your life in between. It sucks. Deliberately give yourself permission every 4-5 hours for a half hour or 1 hour recovery where you can be brain dead that whole time. You’ll feel better when you come back to it. You might not be As motivated as before, but it’s way more sustainable. You’ll be able to do a Lot more on average this way - like, 40 hours a week on something rather than 2 10 hour obsession sessions amidst total exhaustion :).

When your body’s taken care of, your mind’s readier to give the focus and memory you need.

That being said:

1. Audio distractions are awful for me so sometimes I need to close the door, have white noise from a fan, and some rain music on loop.
2. Fidget toys are barely helpful most of the time but sometimes really helpful. It’s good to have them on hand.
3. Stimulants of all kinds: sugar, caffeine, prescribed stimulants. Of course, these all work. But it’s like flooding an engine with nitro. If the engine’s overdue for maintenance and needing an oil change, it’ll still sputter and blast with the nitro but for a short time. Take care of yourself and those little bursts work better and become less necessary.

Encouragement: Prescribed stimulants are great if you can tolerate them. I started getting and ignoring weekly to daily headaches for years on them. These symptoms didn’t show up for me until several years of taking them. So I’m providing as much natural alternative advice I can give for people that either can’t get medication or can’t tolerate it, and for people that are trying to improve their lives along with the help of medication.

Add in one habit at a time. Grow it and build confidence with it so you can rely on it. See how your body and mind respond and see if your life is sustainable with the new habit i.e. can you still do your job, see friends and your partner, take care of kids/pets/home or apartment etc.