View http://waterstreetgm.org/git-why-you-should-never-commit-directly-to-master/
I'm going to be foreword and admit I do this way too often. I've read time and time again that git makes it so easy to branch that it should be a fundamental action in your workflow. I didn't work with SVN for too many years, but I still can't seem to shake this bad habit. There's a nice, applicable walkthrough of the reasoning behind active branching in this piece, it's worth a read if you're using git at all.