I agree with what you said, but would suggest also using the god-mode package. With that, when you hit Esc, you enter "command mode" (hit Esc again to exit it)

I agree with what you said, but would suggest also using the god-mode package. With that, when you hit Esc, you enter "command mode" (hit Esc again to exit it) so most keys you press will be treated as "Ctrl-<key>". So instead of holding Ctrl pressed all the time, you just hit some keys (npbfae) to move around... and search is just "s". Most vim users would just use evil-mode but for the rest of us this is a good compromise and once you get used to it, it avoids the pinkies very well. https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode