Come home at ~6pm, make/have dinner ~7pm, exercise ~8pm, get home and shower ~9pm. At this point there's not much time to do work, especially if you have to go grocery shopping, do laundry, clean, have a family, or any number of other misc things like get a haircut or have clothes dry cleaned.
It's so funny to read stuff like this from people who don't have kids. I remember thinking the same. Now I look back and realize with horror how friggin much free time there was and how much more I could have done with it!
A side project can be 2 hours a week. You can optimise making dinner so it take less time (cook in bulk, make some meals salads). Exercise can be done at home, probably 30 minutes in the morning and evening is more than enough.
As with everything else, you have to prioritize - there will never be time for everything. Meal prep and home exercise alone can cut that schedule down to 60-90 minutes, so you can begin on the side project at 7.30 pm.
7.30-9.30 would give you 2 a day. Say 2 nights and then on the weekends. 8 hours a week. That isn't much but the trick is to do something quite focused.
