So, you made it through the first week. You’re moving around with hjkl, and you’ve stopped instinctively reaching for your mouse. That’s a win.

But now you’re starting to realize there’s so much more to Vim. And you’re right. The second week is where things get exciting. Let’s take your skills to the next level.

Day 8: Leveling Up Your Movements

By now, you’re comfortable with hjkl, w, b, and $, but let’s move even faster.

Faster Navigation:

  • gg → Go to the top of the file
  • G → Go to the bottom of the file
  • { → Move up by a paragraph
  • } → Move down by a paragraph
  • Ctrl-d → Move down half a screen
  • Ctrl-u → Move up half a screen

Precision Jumps:

  • fx → Move to the next occurrence of x on the current line
  • tx → Move before the next occurrence of x
  • Fx → Move backwards to x
  • Tx → Move before x (backwards)

🎯 Goal for today: Navigate large files with ease. Try moving with gg, G, {, } and refine with f, t, F, T.

If you want to read more about vim text objects, check this out.

Day 9: Mastering Text Objects

One of Vim’s superpowers is text objects. They let you operate on words, sentences, and blocks of text efficiently.

Editing Inside and Around Objects:

  • ciw → Change inner word (delete & enter insert mode)
  • diw → Delete inner word
  • yiw → Yank inner word
  • ci" → Change everything inside "
  • di( → Delete everything inside ()
  • da{ → Delete around {} (including brackets)

🎯 Goal for today: Try ciw, diw, ci", and di( on a text file.

Day 10: Searching and Replacing Like a Pro

You already know how to search with /word, but let’s refine it.

Smarter Searching:

  • /word\c → Case-insensitive search
  • * → Search for the word under the cursor
  • # → Search backward for the word under the cursor

Global Find and Replace:

  • :%s/old/new/g → Replace all occurrences of “old” with “new”
  • :%s/old/new/gc → Replace all with confirmation

🎯 Goal for today: Search and replace words in a document efficiently. Read more about search and replace here

Day 11: Buffers, Tabs, and Windows

Vim can manage multiple files. Let’s ditch the old :e and get serious. You can check out my blog post on this topic here

Buffers:

  • :e file → Open a new file
  • :ls → List open buffers
  • :bnext (:bn) → Go to the next buffer
  • :bprev (:bp) → Go to the previous buffer
  • :bd → Close the current buffer

Windows (Splits):

  • :split → Horizontal split
  • :vsplit → Vertical split
  • Ctrl-w w → Switch between windows
  • Ctrl-w q → Close the current window

Tabs:

  • :tabnew file → Open a file in a new tab
  • gt → Move to the next tab
  • gT → Move to the previous tab
  • :tabclose → Close the current tab

🎯 Goal for today: Manage multiple files using buffers, splits, and tabs.

Day 12: Macros – Automate Everything

I’ve wrote about macros in great detail here Macros let you record a series of commands and repeat them.

Recording and Playing Macros:

  1. Start recording: q[a-z] (e.g., qa to record in register a)
  2. Perform some actions
  3. Stop recording: q
  4. Replay macro: @a
  5. Repeat last macro: @@

🎯 Goal for today: Record a macro to format or edit multiple lines and replay it.

Day 13: Visual Mode and Block Editing

To read about visual mode in detail, checkout this blog of mine,

Visual Mode Basics:

  • v → Start character-wise selection
  • V → Start line-wise selection
  • Ctrl-v → Start block selection (useful for column editing!)

Block Editing Magic:

  • Select a column with Ctrl-v
  • Press I (insert mode) and type something
  • Press Esc, and it applies to all selected lines!

🎯 Goal for today: Use Ctrl-v to insert text at the beginning of multiple lines at once.

Day 14: Making Vim Yours

Now that you’ve got the basics down, let’s tweak Vim to fit your workflow.

Essential .vimrc Settings:

set number          " Show line numbers
set relativenumber  " Relative numbers for quick movement
set ignorecase      " Case-insensitive search
set smartcase       " Case-sensitive if uppercase letters are used
set incsearch       " Incremental search
set hlsearch        " Highlight search matches
set wildmenu        " Better command-line completion
set expandtab       " Use spaces instead of tabs
set shiftwidth=4    " Indent by 4 spaces
set tabstop=4       " A tab counts as 4 spaces

Final Thoughts

You’ve made it through your second week, and now Vim feels a little less scary. You’re moving faster, editing with text objects, jumping around files, and even using macros.

The journey doesn’t end here—Vim mastery takes time. But if you keep practicing, soon you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Happy vimming!