I remember complaining about this to Martin early on and he mentioned he found not having a staging area simpler, and I see why whenever I try to switch commits from a dirty workspace that has conflicts with other branches.

Maybe if in git the "trash" that makes a commit dirty was commit-local, then you'd get to move around freely while still having a staging area to cherry pick your changes. Sounds trickier than just not having a staging area (and may be flawed), but gives back the control you have in git over what gets into the repo.