You're driving along a road and you notice a pothole. You pull over to the shoulder, put your hazards on, open up the trunk, take out a reflective vest and tape measure, then you begin to analyze the pothole. You spend an hour analyzing the depth and formation of the pothole and determine that the cause is due mostly to poor mixing of asphalt. You call the town hall and learn that the road construction crew uses a Caterpillar BG500E wheeled asphalt paver. After some extensive research you determine that poor mixing occurs from the inferior design of the BG500E's auger and that upgrading to the BG600D with its improved auger would cause better asphalt mixing and produce paved road conditions less conducive to potholes.

By now it's 9:30pm. It's dark and cold. You realize what your original purpose was: Dinner with friends. That was two hours ago. You missed dinner, but hey, you got some satisfaction.

The above was more of an analogy about Yak Shaving than Rabbit Hole Syndrome, but there are parallels. Like you, I used to be obsessive about details and solving subproblems. I used to come home from work and work on my own side projects for similar reasons as your own.

But then an advisor said something like, "You need to focus. If you want this thing of yours to succeed, you have to focus on making it succeed. Nothing else should matter." So I stopped my side projects and I became so effective at building our product that my employees wondered if I ever slept.

Stay on target. Make it to dinner.