Advisor pushing for dead end topics
One piece of useful advice my thesis supervisors gave me was:


  We're going to throw a lot of ideas at you. You need to figure out which ones are worthwhile and which ones aren't.


If you know that something isn't going to work, then you need to figure out how to communicate to your advisor that it's not feasible. If you've tried and didn't succeed in making your case, try again using a different means of communication. Remember that the ability to make a convincing argument is crucial to success in research.