In summary, here is the path I would recommend for learning emacs.

1. Get emacs installed
   1. I like these instructions. They are succinct but cover the necessities.
   2. However,  I would not recommend using the init.el offered on that page. It provides fixes for many issues that are not fixed by default and if you build your own init.el, you will understand your setup better.
2. The terminology surrounding emacs is often different and confusing. For instance yank in vim and yank in emacs are two very different operations. So I think it is very useful to get a basic grounding before proceeding much farther. Here are some possible sources for a good start.
   1. This introduction gives great detail and I found it very helpful, but it is very long.
   2. Here is another introduction, it is still kind of long, but skips a lot of the history.
   3. Don’t worry about the “direction” keys that most give, modern emacs works well with the arrow keys.
   4. Do learn how to cancel a command, use the mini buffer, and switch between buffers.
3. Install Icicles and learn the basics TODOPost
4. Learn the Emacs help shortcuts:
5. Learn some of the basic keys TODOPost