Ask HN: How can I find something worthwhile to do?

Ideas:

Build the scaffolding for an idea. Then when one hits you just add the domain bits. You might trigger something along the way.

Think about who you would like as customers or even just users. What problems are there for those users that you might help with? Focus on them, not your lack of idea. Just ask them questions or read their reddit posts to look for pain points.

Start something directionally right. Just move in a direction and see how it fits.

Put your toe in the water. Try something today, no commitment to continue.

The focus here is to practice starting. Build a few things. Try connect to people and see what they need.

Lots of us have ideas that we simply never entertain because we are too good at quickly shooting them down when we spot small difficulties, before we've even let the idea out of our heads.

People who are good at ideas are also good at getting them out there, in an imperfect state, and letting other people assess whether those difficulties are dealbreakers, or whether in fact they could help mitigate them.

For example a lot of startup ideas are discarded because of fear of process/legal/regulatory stuff, when actually what you need is to know someone who can help with that. Getting your ideas out there in an open, deliberately naïve way can help.

You are well within reason to work to survive, tuck a little away, and use the rest (of both time and money) to explore unrelated interests and passions. I really enjoy gardening.

The cross-pollination of interests, passions and professional experience may well lead to a fun and interesting project where your $DAY_JOB skills come into their own in a way you’d not expect.

Work to live, not live to work and all that.