[Guide] How to choose a project to work on

This is the easiest [and shortest] guide you'll ever find on how to choose a project to work on. Follow it to the T and you'll enjoy projects from now on.

Thinking of a project idea

The process

1. Take some time away from [home]work and do something you enjoy. It can be anything.
2. Think of a project that can help, enhance, or expedite the thing you already enjoy using what you already know how to do.
3. Incorporate all of the requirements in your project if they aren't already there (ie. make your project use a database if it's required to do so in your project).
4. Incorporate 1-2 extra things from this list and learn something new (teachers love that you tried to do something you were unfamiliar with).

• OCR
• Reading/writing files.
• Using AWS Lambda.
• A third-party library (NPM libraries are good candidates, or other Javascript libraries).
• A new language (Rust? Go? Java?).
• Create an API.
• Interact with social media through their APIs/SDKs.
• Slack integration.
• Google maps.
• Build a web application.
• Use procedural generation/logic in some way.
• Build and use a complex SQL schema.
• Create pagination when displaying results.
• Making a responsive webpage.
• Use asynchronous code.
• Write code that caches data.
• Communicate with something physical.
• Bundle/minify your files.
• Transform data into another form (or this as an example).
• Use a process (may not count because it's not code, unless you interact with it via APIs/SDKs).
• Use source control (you should be doing this anyways though).
• Go low-level.
• Use a new file type you aren't familiar with / or create one of your own.
• Work with the shell.
• Implement a compliance-driven project.
• Database migrations.
• Interact with OS-level controls.
• Write networked-code.
• Using a PaaS.
• Use a flat database.
• Send an email.
• Implement 2FA.
• Use the canvas to draw on a webpage.
• Others ?

Examples

This isn't exhaustive, but some examples you may incorporate in your projects.

• Using Google maps to display a map of the location of the fictitious business.
• Automatically post a message to a Facebook page when an action is taken.
• Storing images you generate in GCP (Google Cloud Platform).
• Analyzing the text of handwritten notes using OCR.
• Have a physical device blink a light when an email is received.
• As you mark work as done, move the corresponding task along the Kanban board through an API/SDK.
• Writing low level code to write text to a file, instead of using the built-in classes.
• Send a message to a slack channel once the process has completed.
• Transform SQL into JSON, or vice versa.
• Implement image zooming over your webpage image gallery.
• Have AWS Lambda process and return for you a result, instead of executing that code locally.
• Force users to verify with 2FA before logging into your web application.