The thing that helped me most with vi(m) was this change of mindset: don't treat Insert as an alternative mode. Instead, threat the append and insert commands a

The thing that helped me most with vi(m) was this change of mindset: don't treat Insert as an alternative mode. Instead, threat the append and insert commands as any other command, just ones that happen to (often) take long arguments, and make it a habit to always terminate those arguments with <esc>.