[flakiness]

Yeah, this happens even within a side project. Smaller trivial ones tend to be found useful, while bigger ambitious one tend to ending up disappointing, even if completed.

At work, giving a spot-time quick help often feels more helpful than pushing through a "proper" project task.

I suspect this is because large part of the "work" project is more like a speculative investment than something obviously useful. That is probably OK because finding large-enough-obviously-useful-things is hard. What we tend to overlook is that finding a tiny-but-obviously-useful-thing isn't as hard as it looks. It's just hard to earn enough from it.