And here I am, hitting the numeric row "1234567" and h, j, k or l because I never leaned how to move to the beginning or end... and i can't get the muscle memory out :(
By the time you've got 20+ years doing this, you'll have a workflow that is extremely well suited to your needs/preferences. And that's the nice thing with vim; it will always have room for you to expand your skills with it, but you don't have to know even close to all of it to benefit from it. Use what fits your needs and what helps; the rest is just candy.
To navigate I use a very reduced set of commands:
Shift-A, Shift-I (insert at end or beginning of line) o, O (insert line below, line above)
For everything else, I use /<snippet> or f<snippet>.
It's great for learning the muscle memory of basic motions.