Working with clients is great. You learn to solve real-world problems, collaborate with teams, and deliver polished results under pressure. But if I’m being honest, the projects that have shaped me the most as a designer and creative developer haven’t been client projects — they’ve been personal ones.

Personal projects are a playground. They give you the freedom to experiment without fear of “wasting time” or “breaking rules.” Want to try a ridiculous new typeface pairing? Go for it. Want to design a homepage with nothing but oversized text and a single line of code? Why not. There’s no one to say no, and that freedom is where creativity thrives.

Every time I build something for myself, I stumble across ideas I never would have discovered otherwise. Maybe it’s a new layout trick in CSS, a cool hover effect in Framer Motion, or an animation concept that makes me rethink how users interact with a page. These experiments might not end up in a final product, but they sharpen my skills and expand my toolkit.

Another reason personal projects matter is that they allow you to show your authentic voice. Client work often requires compromise — aligning with brand guidelines, business goals, or someone else’s vision. But personal work? That’s 100% yours. It’s the purest expression of what excites you as a creative.

And here’s the best part: personal projects often lead to opportunities. Some of my favorite collaborations started because someone saw a little experiment I put online and thought, “I want that energy in my project.” When you build something for yourself, you never know who it might inspire.

I think of personal projects like sketching for artists or practicing scales for musicians. They may not be glamorous, and they may not pay the bills directly, but they keep your craft sharp. They’re the foundation that allows you to grow, evolve, and stay excited about the work.

So if you ever feel stuck, uninspired, or burned out, don’t wait for a brief or a client to spark your creativity. Start something small. Build a weird landing page. Animate a button in ten different ways. Write a blog post about your process.

Because at the end of the day, the projects you build for yourself might just be the ones that change your career the most.