Vim has been the program I have spent the most or second most (the other being a web browser) time using over the last 2-3 years. Still, I don't consider myself

Vim has been the program I have spent the most or second most (the other being a web browser) time using over the last 2-3 years. Still, I don't consider myself a "master" at all. I have not used a formal method for learning, but the general approach has been to check out one of the many vim help pages about once a week. At that time, I look for new tricks based on what currently annoys me the most. Every 2-3 weeks I end up picking up something that sticks. The most recent trick I picked up is using the '%' key (SHIFT-5). The trick before that was buffers (:e, :bn, :bp). I initially started using vim because it was more productive for me than the 'fancy' graphical IDEs, even after I just learned the very basics. Since then, I have steadily gotten more and more productive with it.