For the first couple years I used vim, I spent half the time just hitting "i" and using it like a normal editor. And if I was in the mood to learn something, I would hit <esc> and try not to wreck my document. It's not that big a barrier if you start gently rather than going with a purist mentality that the arrow keys are evil and should be pried off the keyboard. :)

This approach is especially nice when there are great vim keybindings for things like Visual Studio. The only thing you have to learn to start using vim is to always pay attention to if the cursor is a block or not, and if it is, remember to hit "i" before you mash keys if that's not what you want.