alt Hacker News> Dopamine has a half life of 2 minutes in the body.
May be true.
But doing "rewarding" work encourages your body to emit more dopamine. Some people call it "the flow", others "hyperfocus", but it is a constant stream of dopamine that keeps you doing what you currently do. And you can interfere with the emittance and absorbtion by using caffeine.
Dopamine is more like a particular type of a transistor in a large semiconductor. What this type of a transistor does heavily depends on the area of the circuit. And it's never the only thing that's responsible for an entire high level feature, not by a mile. There are some common correlations, but that's about it.
I have never understood why people feel the need to use terms like "dopamine" in very pop culture and highly unscientific way, instead of just describing the state that they are talking about.