For typing equations quickly, I found that a quick (not so pretty) ascii-art notation was fastest. I would transcribe them to latex later. I only did that for

For typing equations quickly, I found that a quick (not so pretty) ascii-art notation was fastest. I would transcribe them to latex later. I only did that for a year or two before I decided that laptops and note-taking in general were counterproductive and switched to never taking notes at all. I still occasionally took notes on my own time while reading the course material, but I found that paying closer attention instead of trying to write things down ultimately worked better.