The best tip imho is to use `vimtutor`. It's installed on every machine that has vim (to the best of my knowledge) and provides an interactive tutorial that builds on itself to teach vim knowledge. It's really cool, if you haven't checked it out just fire up a terminal and give it a play.
Vimtutor is what finally got me into vim after trying it and quickly abandoning it a couple times. The interface finally "clicked" in my head and I was able to edit text quickly with a little practice. I've used vim a lot more since.
