If you're spending a significant amount of time navigating with with arrows keys or hjkl, maybe you should switch on incremental search and start using /[FOO], ?[FOO], t[FOO], b, w, %, ^ and $ more. It's highly unlikely that character-by-character movement will be the fastest way to navigate.
Alt+character is the same as Esc followed by character if you want to speed up your escaping without using a non-standard keyboard layout.
Alt+character is the same as Esc followed by character if you want to speed up your escaping without using a non-standard keyboard layout.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/uq2M1.jpg