I am professionally a software developer for 8 years and I simply don’t have ideas for personal projects (Can’t find any problem that I can fix with programming). At times I feel like that’s natural and I shouldn’t worry about it. But on the other hand, I do like to imagine having something personal that I can work on so that even if some days on my main job are not satisfying, I can always work on my hobby project and find that missing satisfaction.
End goal here is obviously to get better sleep as sometimes my mind feels dissatisfied with the day’s work.
Funnily, I day-dream about the idea of already having done the boring parts (simply manifesting a project that already exists) of some personal project and only solving exciting problems in relation to adding a new feature or exciting aspects.
This creates a problem as I hate staring at a blank file not knowing what to write.
Creative people consistently say that they don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what they want to create. They just work on something. Often something nonsensical and useless. Sometimes something that’s meant to practice something they want to improve upon. Sometimes it’s half of an idea. Almost always it’s something that won’t ever be finished. In the process of working on whatever it is they’re engaged in, they get ideas for the next thing they want to work on. That’s how ideas come. Not from thinking about what the next idea will be, but by being engaged with an existing idea.
An easy way to start is to start journaling. Write down something good that happed during your day. Elaborate on it. Write your thoughts. Don’t edit them or care about spelling or grammar. Just engage with your existing thoughts.