I once had a writing teacher who assigned a page of handwritten special characters for homework because we were going to have to write them at some point and they didn't want to read our garbled mess.
Reasonable for an academic context, but for personal quick scribbles, honestly? Whatever your bad garbled versions of @ and & are, as long as they're consistent, are fine. If it's what you're already writing, it's faster.
There's a formal way of writing quickly called shorthand, which dates back to the pre-typewriter days where writing at the speed of speech was a valuable skill. It's a massive speed bump, but I've never had a good reason to learn it. The amount of memorization and retraining involved to arrive at something no one can read isn't worth it.
The best shorthands are the ones you already use.
If you need faster writing, write less. Abbreviate words and names, use symbols and arrows instead of lengthy explanations. Diagrams and freeform connections are incredibly information dense.
Handwritten notes shouldn't be expected to work as standalone long term storage anyway, so take advantage of the flexibility.
You can write any character you want, so long as it's fast.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
Almost forgot today, I was in such a rush.
Hopefully not tomorrow.
- Rew