The problem with researching something you love

I've often accused myself of having a broad intellectual curiosity.  I use the word "accuse" instead of describe because I've found this trait hindering me in 6 years of academic study.

I usually am researching a topic that I love and am writing on pretty intensively, and multiple times find myself sidetracked by an equally fascinating but completely irrelevant topic.  My current distraction is an article titled:  De Gaulle, the 'Anglo-Saxons', and the Algerian war.  I read the abstract to see if there was something useful for my thesis (and there still might be), but in reality it looks like a fascinating work refuting a general historical idea --that De Gaulle developed his foreign policy post Algeria as an attempt to avoid the mistakes of the Algerian war-- and turned it on his head.  Read the abstract and the article for more details.