if you are viming on an osx macbook of some sort and are sick of the damn small-ass control key they left us with, i've found it helpful to remap the caps lock key to control. you can do this easily in System Prefs > Keyboard > Modifier Keys. so now you can <esc> insert mode with the ^[, hardly moving your hands at all.

This works for me personally because I very rarely find myself even thinking about or noticing the true CAPS key, but if you are stuck on your CAPS bein CAPS, then this wouldn't be for you :!)