You direct your Git history, it does not direct you.

Preamble

Core concepts

• "where I am" = HEAD (alias @)
• "branch" = tag that moves

Timeless advice

• Visualize your history
• Feature branches: rebase on a fresh master often
• History should always be functionally linear (for a given permanent branch)
• Merge = bad. Never merge. Always rebase.
• If Git complains unexpectedly, take a step back.
• Keep your history clean.
• Git history follows the same principles as code
• Git is about tracking incremental changes and dependencies.

Pro-tips

• Make trivial commits for file renames, changes to dependencies