I do my best work when I'm coding on something I actually, personally care about. It gives me the drive to power through all the challenges, and also to strike

I do my best work when I'm coding on something I actually, personally care about. It gives me the drive to power through all the challenges, and also to strike pragmatic balances between clean code, progress, etc. If you're like me, I'd look for a job or open-source project that would let you work on those kinds of problems. Then your skillset grows naturally with each completed feature or bug-fix.