[lawn]

Not noticing that I'm in insert mode isn't something I can remember struggling with.

There are different solutions for it:

- Obsessively press escape so you're always in normal mode

- Style the statusline so it's very colorful when you're not in normal mode

- Have the cursor be "fat" when in normal mode and "thin" when in insert mode (isn't this the default?)

Even though I've been using Vim for 15 years or so I also enter visual mode for some commands. It's quite useful, but not necessary all the time (like di" for instance).

[chaxor]

Mapping escape key to another key is always useful

[taskforcegemini]

or use a vim-clutch