Just use Org-Mode already.
Motivate Yourself by Noting Progress on Your Projects 
I am the type of person who is motivated by a sense of accomplishment. I got A's in school because it felt good to get A's. I feel motivated to contribute to GitHub because of the contributions graph. I motivate myself at work by keeping a log of the things I've accomplished. At home, I have a wall of sticky notes to track progress on a variety of personal projects.
I wanted an opportunity to learn more about UX, UI, Angular, Node, NoSQL databases, and other things, and so decided to turn this sticky system at home into a web application.
We'll have to see if it materializes.