What worked for me was finding a civic problem that was annoying just enough to want to fix, no matter how large it is. You learn a lot from it, but it also gives you a chance to get more involved in civics, particularly from the projects that stem off. Since the motivation is in helping your community out, it gives a little extra motivation and joy. The projects kind of build on themselves since the rabbit holes go so deep.<p>For example, I&#x27;m working on plotting parking tickets in Chicago. Tons of FOIA, lots of data analysis, sanitizing, python, GIS, government induced hair pullings, gnu cli tools, civic meetups, web scraping, etc. Finished this[0] last night using 730k parking tickets after a LOT of cleanup with python. There&#x27;s no way in hell I would&#x27;ve been able to do this a year ago without stepping into something so deep.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plot.ly&#x2F;~red-bin&#x2F;6.embed" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plot.ly&#x2F;~red-bin&#x2F;6.embed</a> (just