It takes time to design interesting work. People often say follow your passions but sometimes the passion requires a brief period of tedious exploration while you set things up.
Through trial and error, you can slowly sketch out a landscape of interesting problems, like glossy monuments rising above the horizon. That’s how it feels anyways when you finally start making some progress; when you finally have fun problems to work on.
But in the beginning you almost have to guess what you think will be interesting. And there’s no guarantee it’ll be useful, but I’ve found a lot of times, the experiences and lessons you’ve learned in one project sets you up for the next.
Usually the things that annoy you the most tend to be the best starting places for interesting problems. And it’s important they’re interesting because it’s easy to lose motivation on things you don’t think are important. Then you’ll feel so guilty for not working, you’ll start working on uninteresting problems just so you can be productive (and that’s when the real trouble really starts). Because tedious, boring labor that slowly invades your life isn’t much different from slavery, the major difference being it tends to be more abstract and invisible.