You wrote "stay in Insert mode", therefore I thought you were making the mistake of staying in Insert mode longer than needed (if I misunderstood what you meant

You wrote "stay in Insert mode", therefore I thought you were making the mistake of staying in Insert mode longer than needed (if I misunderstood what you meant, please ignore my rhetorical question). I didn't become proficient at modal editing until I followed the advice of staying in Insert mode as little as possible, just to enter short bursts of text (and then remapping the Esc key becomes a must).