1. Never do work on a branch that is being tracked on the origin. Always segregate your work on a local-only branch by doing a 'git checkout -b my-work'

2. Since I prefer not to have merge commits that don't add value to the history, I always get the latest changes, and rebase my-work off the latest. i.e.,

  git checkout develop (being tracked on the origin)
  git pull (get latest changes)
  git co my-work
  git rebase develop
  git co develop
  git merge my-work (no merge commit as it's fast forwarded)
  git push
  git branch -d my-work