My advice would be to start with the bare minimum: Using [i] to enter insert mode, [ESC] to get back to command mode, arrow keys to move around in either mode.

My advice would be to start with the bare minimum: Using [i] to enter insert mode, [ESC] to get back to command mode, arrow keys to move around in either mode. With this you can use vim like Notepad. Then observe yourself doing stuff and whenever you think "there must be a better way to do X", find out and learn how to do just that. (You would ideally have a cheatsheet on your desk for quick reference. If it's not on there, search the internet.) At this point, it also helps to know about the basic grammar of normal-mode commands: motions as subjects, commands as verbs. Full sentences are either only-motion, command-motion, count-command-motion or command-count-motion. So if you have already learned that "dw" deletes a word, you immediately know that "d2w" or "2dw" deletes two words. There's not much more to it. Just do your actual text editing and if you ever find yourself thinking "there must be a better way to do this", that's another learning opportunity. It's a lot like language learning, really. You can plow through 10,000 vocabulary words in your SRS if you want, but nothing beats actually using the language.