How do you strategically secure day's work?

I worked entire day to try and solve how to use clerk such that it handles checking user's authentication purely server-side. I wasted entire day on a loop of attempts that didn't really do much in the end. I wrote and re-wrote the code a bunch of times. I have entire two A4 paper sheets of small steps I did. All of that means this: I learned nearly nothing, I've done nearly nothing - and I worked all that time.

What happened?

My own conclusion - and I need help, outside perspective with this - is that this is the problem of tactical, short-term, naive approach.

When I started the day, my biggest problem wasn't "complete solving that user XP bug in the next 30 minutes". My biggest problem was "look ahead and ensure that the day's work will not end up generating 0 results and 0 lessons".

I needed to look ahead at securing worst case, Muprhy's Law outcome of day's work, FIRST. And only then worry about the now-tactics. Strategic line first, tactics second.

How do you do that? How do you ensure you didn't end up looping hopeless attempts all day? How do you make sure that all the hours you put in, are actually meaningful?

It's the 2nd day in a row that this is what I end up doing. I want to learn to operate better and not perform poorly like this.