Rebinding jk to escape because escape is too far away seemed like a fairly ugly hack to me, especially because you can't type it anymore without waiting.
Why not simply rebind caps lock to escape? Caps lock is used awfully little, considering how prominent its position on the keyboard is. On Linux, you can rebind it by adding
setxkbmap -option caps:escape
to your .profile. If instead of an additional escape you prefer it to be swapped around, use
setxkbmap -option caps:swapescape
This is perhaps the most impactful change on my vim workflow.
Why not simply rebind caps lock to escape? Caps lock is used awfully little, considering how prominent its position on the keyboard is. On Linux, you can rebind it by adding
to your .profile. If instead of an additional escape you prefer it to be swapped around, use This is perhaps the most impactful change on my vim workflow.