Personally, I NOP-ed all arrow keys _and_ hjkl also, after I found myself keeping j pressed to get to an area at the bottom of the window. Which would be an L. Then NOP-ed, bit by bit, many other things which could be done faster. 90% of my movements are search, BWtf{} and some scrolling with zt zz zb. The only case I found the lack of hjkl problematic so far is in block visual mode.
Another anti-pattern I did was Da and dWi, NOP-ed them and forced myself to start using C and cW respectively. Not much of an achievement, but feels better :) Same for x, I deleted whole words with x, then pressed i, I removed the mapping of x.
Conclusion: in case you think you have an anti-pattern, just NOP the mappings. In case one or two turns out to be too much of restriction, you could always remove the NOP mapping later.
Another anti-pattern I did was Da and dWi, NOP-ed them and forced myself to start using C and cW respectively. Not much of an achievement, but feels better :) Same for x, I deleted whole words with x, then pressed i, I removed the mapping of x.
Conclusion: in case you think you have an anti-pattern, just NOP the mappings. In case one or two turns out to be too much of restriction, you could always remove the NOP mapping later.