An advice I give to my interns is to build as much as they can, even if they throw everything away the next day.

This way they gather experience without being anchored to boring projects, I too love throwaway ideas that let you experiment.

Make 3 stupid things in a day and you learn more than working on one for a week.

Of course it's different if it's a serious project, in that case go for dog-fooding, if you need it yourself, you won't do anything useless and other people will notice it too.