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Writing at the Speed of Thought (Patreon)

Published:
2025-05-09 16:37:26
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2026-06
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Content

Over the years of tweaking my writing environment, I have noticed a subtle change: Every improvement to my writing systems improves my ability to think and reason about my work and my life.

Looking into the psychology, it's actually quite simple: Writing is thinking.

---

I finally did my Vim video! Hope you like it, folks!

Let me link you to the vim modes and plugins I spend my day inside:

  • Obsidian, vim mode built in, but I use the plugins [improved vimcursor, spacekeys, vim yank highlight, vimium, vimrc support]

  • Firefox, with [vimium, firenvim]

    • (there are actually more specialist browsers that do this better, I use qutebrowser as a lightweight browser in addition to firefox. Luakit is also great)

  • Reaper, with reaper-keys

  • Vim itself! Specifically Neovim with https://www.lazyvim.org

  • Sway, my window manager, has vimish keys. (most tiling window managers do, too)

  • SO MUCH MORE, check out this list for inspiration: https://github.com/erikw/vim-keybindings-everywhere-the-ultimate-list

How would I learn? Using games! Here's three, in increasing order of complexity:

Any cool tools/plugins/learning methods I've missed? I'd love to know about them, I'll test them all out, and put the best in the public video (coming next week).

Thank you all for your support,
Tris

Comments

noboilerplate

Spotted a mistake, or have an improvement? I'd love to know! Thank you so much.

Bryan Lott

Just wanted to say thank you for these videos. I got hooked a while back and they continue to be high quality, straightforward, to the point, easy to follow, and listen to. Thank you!!

noboilerplate
>>173525062

Thank you so much for saying! You're very welcome, I'm delighted that folks seem to like them, and I try every time to do better and better :-)

Luiz Ferraz

I frequently get sad for making "real programmers use butterfly" reference and no one getting it. Here, it made me smile.

Hans Larsson

I'm a big fan of vim and I'm so glad to see you covering it! One of my favorite things about vim you didn't mention is how easy it makes it to edit garbage. At my job we have a few proprietary systems that output hot trash, but if I plug the file into vim I can normally whip up a macro in a minute or two and extract data from the noise. I've had a few times where I needed to extract hundreds of values from one export and insert them into XML tags for another system and with vim macros it took me less than five minutes (and I had fun while doing it).

Csala Bálint

So, when's the ergonomic keyboard video? /j

Csala Bálint

As a daily vim user, one thing I dislike about it (or more precisely, some parts of the community) is how stuck in their way some people are about the base commands. I and some others have thought about remapping the motion keys to push them one key to the right, this'd place them under the same keys your fingers start on when touch typing and would remove some annoyance about losing your place on the keyboard (especially early on in the journey). It wouldn't change the ergonomics since I already dedicate one finger to each key (index on H, middle on J, etc.). But if you dare mention that on a forum where vim users lurk, they'll tell you that you shouldn't ever mess with the defaults because I guess they were given to Bill Joy by God and shall not be changed in any scenario, when in reality he just looked at his terminal keyboard (an ADM-3A, which had arrows on HJKL) and decided to use those letters.

noboilerplate
>>173532416

oh that's so cool! Yes, I love vim's dynamic macro abilities, I'm learning more every day there (as every day for the rest of my life, there's no upper limit!) I didn't mention it in the video because this is not a vim video, it's a vim motions video :-)

noboilerplate
>>173541644

Oh, those militant vimmers have missed the point. When you touch type, your index finger must be on J because that's where the bumps on the keyboard are. What you've done is almost zero-sum: If you've moved your hand over to where your index fingers are on H and G, yes you can now use HJKL without moving your hand, but you've lost QAZ and P (as well as ; and /, less important) The reason *I* don't remap vim's defaults is that I'd ALSO have to remap my browser's vim mode, and my video editor and my window manager AND EVERYONE ELSE'S COMPUTER THAT I USE OCCASIONALLY! I hate to go on about this, but popularity matters! :-)

Maja Abramski-Kronenberg

Thanks for the brilliant video on a topic near and dear to my heart (almost every program I use has Vim-like motions, even NeoVim… 🙃). I understand you don’t want to make it a full tutorial on motion, but one thing I think worth mentioning is that not only number of repetitions (`3` on the slide) fits in the middle slot and not only simple motions (`w`, `f.` and `}` on the slide) in the third one. Text objects¹ offer an even higher level of abstraction. If letter-based motions inherited from typewriters are the most concrete, least abstract motion type, text objects are the highest one (while simple Vim motions lie somewhere between the two ends). Semantic editing is even closer to the speed of thought, as thought is semantic: things like `cit` (change inside a tag) or `da"` (delete a quoted string) feel like your brain is gracefully skating on ice with no friction. These are vanilla Vim motions, not something esoteric or something that depends on special plugins². 9:49 onwards is worded in a misleading way (‘then an optional number of repetitions’, like it’s the only option; ‘all using the same format: operator, count, motion’). I understand it’s simpler to present things this way, but: a. presenting it as ‘the whole truth’ is misleading, and b. text objects are a mindbogglingly good selling point for using Vim motions, thanks to their semantic, shortest-way-from-mind-to-file nature. ¹ See `:help text-objects`, which leads to a section in `doc/motion.txt`. ² Like [MiniAi](https://github.com/echasnovski/mini.nvim/blob/main/readmes/mini-ai.md), which adds other useful text objects such as arguments and function calls.

noboilerplate
>>173597968

I freaking LOVE text objects! Here's the thing, this video is about vim motions, not the vim editor. I've tried to make something that doesn't exist before: A video on vim that could excite people about using it EVERYWHERE (including, like, browser and non-text editors!). I've not talked about ex mode, visual mode etc etc, for the same reason. Does that context make the video make sense, or do you think it still needs a tweak?

Packtion

Yknow I was kinda hoping this was gonna be about stenography!! still very cool, and have been looking for a good introduction of vim.

Companion Technology

I learned vim at a young age but I didn't really master it. I have a lot of basics but now I'm wondering what it'll be like if I use colemak-dh as well 🤔

nicklredwood

I actually hated vim back when I was stuck on a Chr*mebook (that the school somehow let me enable dev mode and install Crouton on). Figured out later that I actually hated the keyboard and its layout. Get an ergomech (Moonlander!) and switched to Dvorak and now I love vim. Whaddaya know.

noboilerplate
>>173761516

heh, stenography is cool, and maybe I'll learn one day, but qwerty must be where I build my muscle memory

Susan Pinochet

On this one I am not convincible. I spent the first 8 months of 2004 trying to make myself learn and love vi motions. I found myself suddenly thinking of something to say, start typing it, and discovering flashing screen chaos as it was interpreted as commands. It has an emotional impact that destroyed my train of thought every time. I don't touch type and I'm in not trying to speed up thinking so those are not selling points for me. I just need the ability to shift between inputting and editing without changing modes (I never remember to do so). For me that sweet spot has turned out to be the classic emacs way. Emacs is the Swiss army knife of text editors, and so it provides me with pretty much the same set of benefits in a different package. I'm not saying the vi way is bad; it just is not for me.

Aaron Young

I greatly enjoyed this video (and all of your presentations) and struggle to use any program that doesn't support Vim motions. (The worst offenders are the programs that exit when escape is pressed.) My favorite cheat sheet while I was learning Vim is from http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html. I particularly like the final lesson version with all the keys shown with their normal mode functionality; my printout of the cheat sheet is well-worn, and I created a version I share, which is the final lesson with extra reminders added below (https://github.com/ExCL-Docs/excl-user-docs/blob/master/cheat-sheets/vim-cheat-sheet.pdf). Although I don't have a transcript typed up, I gave a presentation on advanced Vim at work, and the slides can be viewed at https://geekdude.github.io/tech/advanced-vim/. Even though it's outside the scope of this video, the slide deck has useful links and tips on learning and using Vim.

Tavish

Can you share how you organize any notes you take for a book or a youtube video? I've been titling the note as - to avoid having 100's of "Introduction to ..." notes on the same topic. Also wondering if you prefer to take pause and take notes often during something or if you take notes after the session of consuming the thing is over. Taking notes seems to add friction to the learning process but not taking notes at all harms my long term retention.

noboilerplate
>>185113846

Incredibly, the answer to all these questions is: Readwise! Check out Sergio's amazing video on the Obsidian integration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH84CsBViOs - I'm publishing a video on it over the next week, too, by chance. For a more in-depth answer to your questions, it sounds like you'd really benefit from reading the best little book on Zettelkasten (the method I use to take my notes in obsidian), by Bob Doto, called A System For Writing. You could even read and highlight it from INSIDE readwise by uploading the ebook to it (legally because I bullied Bob into selling a DRM-free version, it's here: https://traditionkeeper8.gumroad.com/l/asystemforwriting )

Eni_one

Hello, I'd like to ask how do you switch between vim edit and navigation mode, I know you can use the "ESC" button but for me its too far way to be changed smoothly between than and I end up just switching to edit and using it as if vim mode isn't enabled most of the time. Do you ( or anyone here ) have a better way to switch between the modes in obsidian? I know in VSCode i can map to somethin like "pressing j + k superfast" and I'm aware of a plugin called vim-toggle but it breaks commands like a- or i-