Honestly, I think the problem often isn&#x27;t &quot;I don&#x27;t know what to program&quot; but instead &quot;None of my ideas are things I actually can, or want to, program&quot;.<p>I have lots of big ideas. Big applications, distributed systems, etc. My experience tells me they would take months or years of dedicated work, even working with others. I already have a job.<p>I have lots of small ideas. I don&#x27;t want to spend time on most of them because they&#x27;re not particularly interesting to me. I don&#x27;t want to write a TODO application that&#x27;s perfectly suited to me, even though I want such a thing. I don&#x27;t want to futz around with the UI and write all the mundane utility functions. There&#x27;s no interest there for me.<p>So there&#x27;s just nothing I&#x27;m particularly passionate about enough to motivate me to spend my time on it. And that&#x27;s no big deal, at work the I have the luxury of other people thinking up the big problems and providing me with countless amazingly intelligent peers with whom to create things. And at home I have other hobbies.<p>Edit:  So, I guess to crystallize some advice from that, at least for people who are similar to me: try to get a job that satisfies your &quot;I want to code amazing things&quot; itch, and then enjoy everything else the world has to offer outside of work.