I'm playing into the joke here, but on most terminals, alt + <key> will actually be sent to the program as <esc> + key. You can use this to avoid pressing escape in Neovim.
Interesting tip too! Need to find the right combination however, I noticed that Alt-L might be a good one (no side effect it seems).
That will move your cursor to the right by one character after exiting insert mode.
Entering + exiting insert mode with i and Esc moves your cursor to the left by one, so I suppose this neutralizes it?
+1. I mainly use this approach. If your next intended move is to go to the next line, Alt-J will exit insert mode and go to the next line immediately.
Also the same for Alt+w/W/b/B, Alt+o, Alt+0, etc etc and it's just a matter of using your left thumb at the same time as navigating.