I have a local branch for day-to-day dev work in git. My workflow is:
Here's what I do. But - this isn't private. I do this so that I can collaborate with myself (so to speak). It lets me work on the same branch on two or more boxes. if other people had access to the shared repo, they could see the work I'm doing on the branch. Of course, on my home repos, nobody else has access, so it's still private. On github, all the world could see my stuff. Like they really care. ;)