I've been using Git for almost a year now, but I didn't really start using Git until recently when I began working for Intridea.  Once I started using Git on a daily basis, dealing with multiple projects, and multiple branches per project, I would occasionally make the mistake of changing code on the wrong branch.  While annoying, it was easily fixed by stashing the changes and applying the stash to the proper branch.

As much as I love git stash, this began to get old, and constantly hitting up git status to check the current branch wasn't cutting it.  After a bit of googling, I found this.  It describes how to add the current branch name and its clean/dirty status to you terminal prompt.

Just add this to your .bash_profile: 

function parse_git_dirty {
  [[ $(git status 2> /dev/null | tail -n1) != "nothing to commit (working directory clean)" ]] && echo "*"
}
function parse_git_branch {
  git branch --no-color 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e "s/* \(.*\)/[\1$(parse_git_dirty)]/"
}

export PS1='\u:\[\033[31;40m\]\w\[\033[0;33m\]$(parse_git_branch)\[\e[0m\]$ ' 

And you should end up with something that looks like this:

As you can see, I like to use a bit of color to help things stand out.

So far this has been immensely helpful.  With this info at a glance, I always know where I am and how I last left things.