You can remap the key combination "jk" to ESC in order to switch effortlessly from editing mode to normal mode.

    inoremap jk <esc>

("jk" doesn't normally appear in English and is easy to type)

but in other languages you might be doomed

  $ aspell --lang=pl dump master | cut -d / -f 1 | fgrep jk | wc -l
   981

kj, jj, kk are common options as well.

Probably, but it's still an awful pinky stretch a gazillion times a day. I have escape on my thumb cluster. Easy to reach and utilizes the strong thumbs.

Maybe but I strongly recommend Ctrl-[ instead. Life changing.

I finally learned that trick when I spent a lot of time typing on an iPad Pro with a Smart Keyboard Folio. It doesn't have an escape key at all.

It bugged me terribly at first but I liked it once I was used to it.

Uf. Get a keyboard with a thumb cluster and put Esc there. I use vi bindings everywhere and not putting Esc on a an easy to reach key would be terrible.

If you want to have Escape in a good position, then the far top left is a really bad position, as is having Control on the caps lock position. But then to change that you'd need to reconsider the keyboard layout itself, which seems like a too big of a mental hurdle for most people.

Ctrl next to A pre-dates vi