Is this something you do in a brand new project whose organization, direction and overall requirements are not clear? Or persistently?

There is such a concept as a brand new project not requiring version control until it hits a certain stage: you know it when you get there.

Persistently. My solo projects aren't particularly complex though so I haven't really wasted any time by not being able to use git history for debugging. I currently have 38 files modified on my solo work project. If I'm in a team I keep it somewhat tidy but solo I only treat commits as manual save points I use only when my spidey senses tingle or when I'm about to refactor something that works fine as it is. Also when I'm done with a large part of the SW so the next dev at least has some rough timeline for what got added when and how many times it was majorly iterated. It's not a good habit but it has yet to bite me in the ass so I learn.

Edit: A large part of the reason now that I think about it is that I don't work off real tickets but just bugs I notice or things that get mentioned on the current solo work project. In a team I can just dissect the ticket and am forced to do only that ticket on the branch whereas solo I'm just jumping all over the place. Sometimes I'll do thing X partway, start considering options and in the meantime do thing Y so it's a mess but the tasks get done so.. For context the project is 1 year old developed from 0 by me. Essentially an internal log parsing and analysis tool for a couple formats. Nothing particularly complex.

True, and I'm guilty three too, but there is a limited amount we can expect toolmakers to do to protect those of us who misuse their tools :)