[smwhreyebelong]

I second that. I have found that I learn things faster (and they 'stick' better) when I work on something that I find interesting/cool.

The other benefit of working on it is that you really relate to the problem you are trying to solve (since you will be the first user) and you might end up creating a viable product for a niche. There are tons of startups that started this way (one example is hotmail, where the founders needed a way to access their email from multiple locations)