Most product advice tells you to find an underserved market, validate it with surveys, and ship an MVP. That is good advice for someone with capital and a year of runway. For everyone else — including me, three years ago — the better starting point is the friction already on your desk.
Every tool I have shipped that became a real project started as a five-minute fix for something that annoyed me. A receipt generator because dividing a bill in a group chat was a tax on everyone. A bionic-reading app because I was tired of losing focus halfway down dense articles. A workflow builder because I was sick of duct-taping zaps that broke in the middle of the night.
Building for yourself is a competitive advantage. You do not need to interview the user — you are the user. You do not need to guess at the next feature — you'll feel its absence the next time you open your own product. You ship faster because you know exactly when good enough is good enough.
The trap is scaling too early. Before you write the marketing site, before you set up Stripe, just use the thing for a month. If you stop using it, you have your answer. If you do not, the product has earned the right to grow.
Every project I have taken to the public started this way: built for me, used for two months, then opened up. Half of them never opened up — they are still useful internal tools. That is fine. Building tools for yourself is a low-risk way to keep your edge sharp. The ones that grow into products are a bonus.
Stop searching for a product idea. Open your own week's worth of friction and pick the most annoying thing. That is your next project.