I have wanted to learn some kind of shorthand for a long time, but learning real "secretarial" shorthand takes years of work. It's like learning a new language, from what an expert tells me.
A little while ago I found an alternative. "Dutton Speedwords," a system developed by its namesake back in the 50s, is an alphabetic shorthand system. I found some quick lesson material (a crash course, really) and a fairly extensive dictionary translating speedword constructions into their plain-english equivalents. I used the latter to make a to- and from-speedwords translation dictionary, and the former I just formatted in a style similar to the DIYPlanner widget set. The lot is presented here in one lump of a PDF, all formatted in the 4.25x6.75" size. I haven't bothered with a screenshot here for two reasons: first, my screenshot utility was only installed on my other computer, which recently bit the dust. Second, a translation dictionary isn't terribly photogenic. That's what this file consists of: pages of instructions, and pages of word translations. Download it and see if Speedwords is right for you!