[benjamincburns]

As the GP alludes to, the key insight to becoming productive in VIM is the power of the movement system. To (mis)quote Gary Bernhardt, the slowest thing you can do is read something to find where you want to be. Searching is better, and better still is being able to just go straight to the place you want to go, even if it's in another file.

If you're using a file tree, you are probably doing it wrong. Instead, get used to tools like Command-T and the :vim command. Also set incsesrch and hlsearch. Once you learn how these things work, start making a conscious effort to play a bit of vim golf to get to where you're looking to be in as few keystrokes as possible. It's a bit painful starting out, but once you get over the hump you really will feel like the mouse is obsolete.

[regulation_d]

So I have Ctrl-P installed and I used it sometimes, but often I just use NERDTree to navigate to a file. I think my brain does a better job of retrieving the location of the file than the name of the file or module/class. I find it mentally less taxing to use NERDTree, even if it takes a few more keystrokes.