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7. Thy branches shall be short-lived.
The longer your branch sits around, the more likely you are to run into more merge conflicts and be working with out-of-date code. Don't let your branches sit around for more than a few days, a week at most. This. Get them to a good stopping point and submit your pull-request. If you want to commit code from a branch that is more than a week old, make a new branch off latest master and cherry-pick your old work into the new branch.
"Can't I just merge latest master into my own branch?" you ask. Why, yes, you may, but (a) it creates merge commit bubbles and (b) navigating the possible resultant merge conflicts requires great care, skill, and time; 'tis best not to let your branches get old in the first place.
The need for this rule, of course, depends on the velocity of the project and with how many team members you work, but you are likely to run into more merge conflicts and be working with out-of-date code the longer your branch sits aroundit is a good and important general practice.
Bonus. Thou shalt ask for help.
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