The epiphany I experienced with rebasing is that this is an incorrect visualisation of the workflow. It's not like you create a separate branch and work independent of master. It's more like working on a kind of local pre-release ahead of master.

You work on the development/pre-release, then consolidate by cherry-picking or otherwise, leaving all the todo's, spinoffs, experimental, personal notes in the pre-release. Like a reptile shedding its skin.