I'm relatively new to Vim (~4 months).
I used the "learning by doing" approach by forcing myself to use Vim to write C and Python at work.
I had two main reasons for learning Vim: (1) Vim is everywhere, so it must be worth it to learn the basics at least; and (2) modal editing felt easier on my wrists than the standard mouse + shortcuts approach I ended up using in other IDEs.
Here is my advice:
1. Start with only a theme in your .vimrc, so no plugins or non-standard key bindings.
2. Use Vimtutor (or any other tutorial) to learn the basics: normal vs. insert mode, movement, manipulation, yank/paste (+ clipboard), splits, buffers, and searching.
3. As you write code, you will find yourself wanting to know how to do X. This is where Google and a simple "cheatsheet" file come in. Once you find out how to do X via Google, add an entry to your cheatsheet file (example in HTML form: [1]).
4. In many cases, you will find that a plugin will solve one of your issues. Install that plugin and add it to your .vimrc. I recommend vim-plug[2] for managing and installing plugins.
5. There are many useful plugins out there. Two I would strongly recommend: CtrlP[3] and NERDTree[4].
Once you have a good grasp of Vim, I would recommend exploring Emacs + Evil-mode if you want a more complete IDE experience.
[1]: https://assil.me/2018/11/12/vim-cheatsheet.html
[2]: https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug
[3]: https://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim
[4]: https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree