I find thinking of git as a DAG of diffs, and branches as mutable references to DAG nodes, a simplifying conceptualization. I found git really easy to pick up and much, much simpler to learn and use than svn or cvs.

Thinking of it this way, I know the solution to my code repo problems before I know the exact commands that perform the graph transitions. Because I have this mental model, I know the commands must exist in one form or another.