Most of us learn engineering through school and through work, where the is a product owner and a project manager that gives us work in chunks and manage the project week to week.

When you do personal projects that you can't finish in a day, you have to be product owner, project manager and engineer at the same time. And it is hard, especially if we hope to produce the same quality of work.

So either it takes a lot more time to get there, or you need to "downgrade" the quality of the work to finish the project in a timely manner.

And in the end, projects in your free time should bring you joy, not dread.

I hope it helps you, or someone reading this, cope with a pile of unfinished projects, that will never be finished. And that's fine.