I found remapping Esc to ‘jk’ (as a right-hander) to be solid gold. Index-middle fingers. Practically instantaneous: they’re already on the keys if you’re doing it right.
But don't do that when you plan to use Vim to write in Dutch. I've also tried 'jk' for a while and it worked great until I started writing some texts in my native language: 'ijk' appears to be a pretty common ending for a lot of Dutch words :)
These days I've mapped CAPSLOCk to ESC and super happy with it.
Yup, this mapping is pure gold. I also mapped jj in insert to save (and put me back into insert again). I'm not as good at remembering to use it though.
These days I've mapped CAPSLOCk to ESC and super happy with it.