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It's pretty easy to use OmniPlan to do this, though it certainly isn't the cheapest tool one could imagine for the job. If you wanted to devote roughly half your time to big tasks, you would set up an empty project plan, create a single resource (you), set the project hours to be the normal amount of time you work, and your individual resource hours to be the amount of time you want to devote to big tasks. This can vary on a day-by-day basis with no trouble.

Then, when you get big tasks on your plate, you just add a row with the task name, the number of hours of effort you expect it to take you, and if necessary, any start/finish constraints or dependencies. Level the plan, bring up the utilization view, and you can see at a glance where you have available time in your upcoming schedule. You can easily see what you would have to defer or cancel to make something fit in a given time frame.

My little example here shows me working only in the afternoons, except for the week of Sept. 5 where I work full-time, and taking the 15th and 16th off. Gray areas are non-working hours. The red blobs indicate overcommitment, so I would have to split the "proposed lengthy task" or shuffle some of the others around.

Gantt chart:


Utilization diagram: