Coming from svn, I too felt initial discomfort about git's promiscuous branching, but then I learned to stop worrying and love the index.  Working in svn repositories evokes "I wish this was a git repository" every time.<p>I wouldn't have initially trusted git if it weren't for Linus's Google Talk.  And I'm glad I gave it the time it requires to change workflows.<p>The most unexpected side-effect of using git is a newfound willingness to follow experimental ideas in my projects as fast as I can think/type.  I'll guess it comes from confidence in git's ability to safely partition branches in-situ; the relative speed and ease with which branches are created, merged and destroyed; and the existence of the index and stash.  Git removes the version control inertia I didn't even know was there.