Become a collector of ideas. No matter how far-fetched or seemingly impossible - write that idea down as soon as it shows up.
As other commenters have pointed out, your own problems can be a great starting point. Also, look for issues people around you have. Write the problems down and try to find solutions for them.
Be inspired by other people's ideas. Add them to your list. There's a bunch of fascinating ideas in this thread already. Do some of them excite you? On the list they go!
Hopefully, you'll find that ideas tend to breed. Thinking about a given problem makes you think of related ones. Or an entirely different problem with the same structure.
Add to the list until something appears that you're passionate about. Or something you think might have a good shot at earning money. Then start looking into how you can build that something.
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I have been collecting project ideas for years but only started working seriously on one of the larger ones last year.
My problem has been the opposite of yours: Choosing something to work on and sticking with it.
Partly to help myself focus, I recently made https://premature-documentation.com/ in the hope that other people might find a project to work on or share ideas for projects they don't have the time to work on themselves.
The idea is for the site to be community-driven, but I won't be able to work on functionality or look for contributors right now. So for the foreseeable future, it's going to be me offloading everything from my list of ideas until only the obviously bad ones are left ;)
As other commenters have pointed out, your own problems can be a great starting point. Also, look for issues people around you have. Write the problems down and try to find solutions for them.
Be inspired by other people's ideas. Add them to your list. There's a bunch of fascinating ideas in this thread already. Do some of them excite you? On the list they go!
Hopefully, you'll find that ideas tend to breed. Thinking about a given problem makes you think of related ones. Or an entirely different problem with the same structure.
Add to the list until something appears that you're passionate about. Or something you think might have a good shot at earning money. Then start looking into how you can build that something.
---
I have been collecting project ideas for years but only started working seriously on one of the larger ones last year.
My problem has been the opposite of yours: Choosing something to work on and sticking with it.
Partly to help myself focus, I recently made https://premature-documentation.com/ in the hope that other people might find a project to work on or share ideas for projects they don't have the time to work on themselves.
The idea is for the site to be community-driven, but I won't be able to work on functionality or look for contributors right now. So for the foreseeable future, it's going to be me offloading everything from my list of ideas until only the obviously bad ones are left ;)