Vim only seems hard because it's so profoundly different. If you persist for even one or two evenings, I'm pretty confident most Hacker News readers are easily sharp enough to be back up to their old speed in Notepad-type editors, and from there you only get faster.
You don't have to learn it at work either. I find it's helpful to make Vim the only text editor you ever use with a dark background. The visual cue seems enough to put you in "Vim mode" so you press i before you start writing. When the background is white in your whizbang C# IDE or a Hacker News comment box, you just use your old editing habits.
My love affair with Vim started after 15 minutes in `vimtutor` when the internet went out one day. o, O, A, I, dd, p, and a couple other commands were enough for me to be see the light and be productive. Everyone needs to give vimtutor a fair shot.
You don't have to learn it at work either. I find it's helpful to make Vim the only text editor you ever use with a dark background. The visual cue seems enough to put you in "Vim mode" so you press i before you start writing. When the background is white in your whizbang C# IDE or a Hacker News comment box, you just use your old editing habits.