There is also a cumulative value in your knowledge and understanding when hacking on things for such specific personal niggles - which over time makes future ef

There is also a cumulative value in your knowledge and understanding when hacking on things for such specific personal niggles - which over time makes future efforts more likely to reap some combination of higher rewards, faster execution and less effort... and more often than not what we learn can be applied to our day jobs in unforeseen ways. Having a problem organically emerge in front of us that affects us personally is just a really easy thread to pull on for learning things.