In true ADHD spirit, I will read a few comments, favorite this post, and maybe consider adding some of these to my routine at some point in the future.

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.

Lots of people mentioning high BPM music, I’m gonna drop where I got my username from: the 1970s funk band Parliament. While not high BPM, there’s usually several instruments playing completely different melodies at the same time in a way that really scratches my ADHD brain. It’s made me develop a theory that high musical throughput is the secret to ADHD musical enjoyment – funk is the very wide pipe compared to the high pressure pipe that is high BPM.

One time after a rough night with my partner’s mental health issues flaring up, i barely slept and was too tired to be distracted at work.

If i wanted to do something it just happened, i just did it. And kept doing it. Until it was done.

It felt like having a superpower, but i don’t think i want to recommend emotional stress as a dopamine trick.

Motorcycle spin, the air, noise, traffic, vibrations, complex smells, even the changes in air temp I’m always more centered afterwards.

But if I can’t go out, yeah nightcore’d dance music.

This is bad but sometimes I just have to smoke some weed to initiate stuff

Darude - Sandstorm.

This isn’t a joke.

Finding a good pharmacological balance

Adderall

The Mars Volta.

Really any overly complex high energy progressive music, Yanni, Tool, Coheed, Bach, whatever. But to me, mars Volta ticks all the boxes and gets me going HARD.

Try blasting Meccamputechture and not rocking with it.

Drunkship of lanterns will make me finish EVERYTHING.

Create an environment where the only thing you do is work. Doesn’t matter were so long as it’s easy to get there. Reward yourself for being there with something like candy or coffee or whatever your poison of choice is. Eventually you’ll trick your brain into associating that place with both work and fun

For me it was the same coffee shop every day for about five years

Music from Chipzel, loud

High bpm music. Vocaloid or phonk. And noise cancelling headphones.

Gamified Pomodoro timers work really well for me, I’ve been using Focus Friend and it works well (for now)

Levodopa.