[larrybolt]

What made the difference for me was a Vim version with a project/file drawler, like the one by alloy: https://github.com/alloy/macvim

After a while I got fluent enough with vim to switch to NERDTree.

Btw, such a shame vimR (http://vimr.org/) wasn't around back when I started using vim, it looks awesome to learn vim-motions but still be able sometimes to use insert-mode and mouse if you have to get something done quickly.