We all know about no-op'ing arrow keys in Vim to get us to break the habit of relying on them for inefficient movement. But, as this post points out, it is not the location of the arrow keys that makes them inefficient, but the modality of the movement: single steps in insert mode is a horrible way to move around when normal mode provides so much better functionality.

But here is the thing: while normal mode provides for much better and more efficient ways to move around than insert mode, it also provides for ways to move that are just as inefficient as arrow keys. In fact, there is nothing that makes, e.g. "j" significantly better than "<DOWN>", and so if we replace <DOWN><DOWN><DOWN><DOWN> with jjjj, we are just slapping on some fresh paint on a rusty bike and calling it "faster". We have not even replaced one bad habit with another, we are indulging in the same bad habit, albeit with a different "it". A bad habit that is not only inefficient, but, perhaps a much worse sin in the Vim-world, inelegant.

This customization will help break you of that habit by forcing you to enter a count for each of the basic moves ("h", "j", "k", "l", "gj", "gk"). This itself will make you more efficient for any move of three repeats or more: "3j" is more efficient than the uncounted "jjj" equivalent. But, in addition, it will also have the side-effect of making you come up with more efficient moves yourself: as your eyes focus on the point where you want to go, instead of counting off the lines (or reading off the line count if you have ":set relativenumber"), you might find it more natural to, e.g. "/<pattern>" .

In fact, you might find that in many cases, you do not even need to actually move as such. For example, instead of moving to a line 8 lines down and deleting it, "8jdd", you could just ":+8d". Or instead of moving to a line four lines up, yanking it, moving back to where you were and pasting it, "4kyy4jp", you can just ":-4y" and "p". Once you get good enough at it, it will seem like magic the way you can manipulate lines far from your current position without moving! And what you will find is that, beyond the increased efficiency in number of keystrokes, there is an increase in mental efficiency: the microseconds of visually re-orienting yourself after each move is no longer a cost that you have to pay over and over and over again.

Naturally, you are going to find things less efficient and less elegant at first. But that is just the pain that of stressing out mental muscles that have not been exercised enough, like that first leg day after the holidays (or maybe even the first leg day ever after signing up at the gym 4 years ago).

Eventually, your efficiency will increase.

But more than efficiency, the elegance of your moves will eventually increase as well. Dramatically. As far as editing text goes, at any rate.

So, stick the following into your "~/.vimrc", and be prepared for some pain and frustration and swearing and clumsiness as you retrain your muscle memory and your mind, before gaining a new level of enlightened "acting-without-doing".

NOTE: One of the greatest impediments to me naturally working with counted-movements was the fact that counting the number of lines to go in each direction is disruptive: it completely breaks my "flow", jarringly derailing my train of thought. See below for the solution to this, the implementation of which I consider a mandatory pre-requisite to working this way.

set number
if has('autocmd')
augroup vimrc_linenumbering
    autocmd!
    autocmd WinLeave *
                \ if &number |
                \   set norelativenumber |
                \ endif
    autocmd BufWinEnter *
                \ if &number |
                \   set relativenumber |
                \ endif
    autocmd VimEnter *
                \ if &number |
                \   set relativenumber |
                \ endif
augroup END
endif