As software engineers, we often get caught up in sprint planning, ticket backlogs, and code reviews for commercial projects. It is easy to lose touch with the pure joy of coding that got us into this industry in the first place.
Hobby hacking is the antidote. Working on a project with zero commercial pressure, where you are the sole designer, developer, and user, is incredibly liberating. You can write messy code, try out weird libraries, and experiment with techniques you’d never be allowed to deploy in a production database. Many of the most successful projects at Google and elsewhere started as weekend hacks. Give yourself permission to build something ridiculous just because it is fun.