gv to reselect the last selected visual mode region is also often handy in my experience.

Now I'm mad at you for not telling me years ago. I've been missing this functionality since forever.

I recently saw a recommendation for Practical Vim by Drew Neil (https://pragprog.com/titles/dnvim2/practical-vim-second-edit...) in an other vim thread and decided to pick it up. It's been really enlightening and provides more than just reading documentation. It also goes in depth to how the author thinks about vim motions and how to effectively accomplish your goals with them.

I'll second this. Is an excellent book. After each chapter I recommend to take your own distilled notes. After reading the book you will get a very solid base command knowledge in Vim. What I really liked about it is that you can read it without being distracted: go immediately to the computer to test things out, this is because he painstakingly took the effort to show in pages what actually happens after each time you press a keystroke. I truly appreciated this, because you can read the book anywhere and focus on Vim mechanics without the need to try everything out on the fly.

‘. to take you back to where you last made a change

You can go even a step further using the <c-o> and <c-i>.

These will allow you to go back and forward in your jumplist.

I mapped them to <Tab> and <S-Tab>, this way I can easily move to previous locations.

This is BY FAR my most used shortcut.