If it's at all reassuring, I felt that way when I first stumbled while doing them, but since then the story has adapted and changed in my mind, but looking back now, I don't see it as time wasted, or a lost story, or anything like that, it feels more like practice.
In many ways, all the decades old stuff I wrote is just a first draft, that's all.
Experience builds up over many failures till you finally get it right and have a success. People rarely succeed at anything the first time, and even those that do still improve the more they do it. Writing is no different.
To get back to the original point and offer a potential solution: in recent times whenever I've found myself 'stuck' in a chapter that feels bland and pointless, I generally go back a few chapters and re-read till I identify the point where things head in the direction of bland padding... then just do things differently.
Most of the time, I find that there is an alternative I've missed, or a path I've not taken that will lead to something more interesting for my characters, whether it's a conflict with someone, or a resolution of something still hanging, or simply an unknown danger or revelation or even just a new environment that will prompt something new and more interesting.
(I recently dumped three fully written chapters for exactly that reason. A choice earlier on had basically forced a method of executing events that simply wasn't gripping... and in the last few chapters of a book, you REALLY don't want a dull patch to creep in.
)
