This is a huge deal, and you've done a great job expressing it. I definitely find that I think faster as a result of being a vim user / being in vim. Since most of the actual editing gets thrown to muscle memory, all I have to do is think 'gosh it'd be nice if that refactoring happened' and it does, while I'm on to thinking through the next step.

I'm constantly mortified at how rarely my co-workers/employees use vim macros. I make vim do the hard parts for me.