I can't agree more.
I used to work for a company that develops smartphones that still holds top 3 market share in US. The day-to-day work is eating up all my time. When I'm developing my own project, I never seem to accomplish anything. I planned out some huge tasks for myself each night and I was so determined to finish them all, but it all ends up with losing the focus.
After all, I developed a small app for myself, I hope it would help you while you're doing your side project ( I try to not sound like I'm doing advertising for my project... since it's free of charge, feel free to use it and give me some feedback if you like ).
www.vodolist.com is what I come up while I was still employed at my old employer. What I could do with this app is that, I decided to do only "3 tasks" for my side project. ( and only 1 task for some other smaller project. you can customize it ). With only a few tasks involved each day, I can force myself only work on the important and only crucial components of my side project.
This post gets a little long with the help of scotch so I guess I'll just stop here for now.