[waych]

Also the Alt key + letter keys produces a series of key codes prefixed by escape, so one can use any single letter normal-mode command with the Alt key, resulting in "Escape"+<key>. This is convenient to quickly switch to e.g. moving the cursor with e.g. `Alt+j` to both escape from insert mode back to normal mode _and_ move down a line.

[hatmatrix]

I knew about the Ctrl+[ but this might be a game changer... I have tried vim several times but have never gotten used to the idea of staying in one mode or another (emacs chords is more intuitive to me). This seems promising.

[octos4murai]

Another popular thing people like to do is map something like <k-j> or <j-j> to Escape. This can be easily done in your vimrc.

While the <Alt-[a-z]> mapping is great and enabled by default, it does have the side effect of logging an extra key press based on the [a-z].

[octos4murai]

Brilliant! If this was all I learned today, it would not be a wasted day. Thank you.