Indeed, I have been caught out so many times with the word I want initially appearing on screen, and then auto-"corrected" to something else when I input the next word and I am no longer looking.
First thing I do is disabling autocorrect. It introduces more errors than it fixes. Also it's changing a correct word in language A to another correct word in language B. But I need the language A word.
Not claiming it's foolproof, but after years of using GBoard, the multilingual keyboard mode now feels like it corrects far more than it corrupts. Or maybe I'm just too accustomed to it.
On the other hand you will never get my proper keyboard for work away from me.