there is an org mode for vim, how good is it? https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode

(also i never understood why collapsible nested lists make such a big difference)

Not that great in my experience, good enough to read and navigate through org files, but lacks many features and has performance issues. vimwiki https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki is probably the best note-taking plugin for vim.