To me this comes down to long term priorities. It's easy to lose focus on a side project if it's just a side project. The discipline required to maintain a side

To me this comes down to long term priorities. It's easy to lose focus on a side project if it's just a side project. The discipline required to maintain a side project for most people is really difficult. What's the priority for you, let's say ten years out? ... Make a successful career working for someone else or eventually build something you own / created? If you can't answer that question then you're always going to struggle. Now once you have your long term priorities, now stop looking months ahead and start looking in terms of short term commitments to yourself and your project. Carve out some time every week to "plan". Make commitments to yourself in terms of days/weeks. Actually plan out your work and execute based on a plan of small iterations. Treat your side project like you would a work project except with much stricter time/resource constraints. This comes difficult to most people without the checks and balances of work, colleagues, bosses etc. But it's much easier once you make much much smaller commitments about what you're doing and actually plan your work without jumping in to coding, which for coders on a side project is always the best part. You start tackling the most interesting bits in your head first and never want to get through the grunt work and the passion fades.