Did you take the time to learn vim? Just start using it. With only a small subset of commands you can be pretty damn efficient. The fact that you can compose actions means that you don't need to remember every command - you can just create them yourself. After a very short while you will "get" it. You can say to yourself "I want to change the next three words" and immediately do it by pressing "c3w". Or you can move around with your mouse. The former is much faster.

BTW, I rarely use escape. I am using Spacemacs with evil-mode, and the default "fd" is perfect for me. It's much faster than using ESC.