I realise this question is quite old (2012!), but for anyone still looking for SVN-style changelists in Git, I've actually written a tool called git-cl that does exactly this.

Full disclosure: I'm the author, so take this with a grain of salt. But if you're missing SVN's changelist functionality, git-cl lets you group files by intent before staging or committing:

git cl add feature-work file1.py file2.py
git cl add bug-fixes file3.py file4.py
git cl status  # Shows files grouped by changelist
git cl commit feature-work -m "Implement new feature"

Think of it as multiple named staging areas rather than Git's single staging area. Changelists are stored locally (not shared) and work alongside Git's normal workflow.

Might be worth a look if you're wrestling with organising multiple changes in your working directory.