Ask HN: Deciding which project idea to pursue?

Hello, friends. I've built a few small projects in my time and as a PhD student I enjoy working on smaller projects outside of my research to keep my skills honed and to keep my exposure to other programming languages, ideas, etc. up. I currently have a list of project ideas I'd like to start; I'd like to choose one that is not only fun to work on but one that may have the potential to turn into something a little longer lasting.

So I'm curious, what heuristic would you use to go about ranking a list of project ideas in terms of what to spend my time and effort on? Have you been in a similar situation? What decisions did you make and what were their results? I appreciate anyone's help / feedback.

Tyler Bell