I suppose someone (even an experienced vimmer) might argue that learning vim is not so much "umwelt-transformative", but rather like "muscle memory training", like LeetCode drilling.

Indeed, basic vim-navigation - (hjkl, w, b) is muscle memory.

But, I'd argue the umwelt shift comes from vim's modal nature and its language of text objects. You start perceiving text as having an inherent grammar - "inside parentheses", "around word", "until comma." Text gains topology and structure that was invisible before.

The transformative part isn't the keystrokes but learning to think "delete inside quotes" (di") or "change around paragraph" (cap). You see text as composable objects with boundaries, not just streams of characters. This may even persists when you're reading on paper.

That mental model often transforms your keyboard workflow not just in your editor - but your WM, terminal, web browser, etc.