Offlineimap and mbsync are two separate tools that do the same thing. I've had a good experience with offlineimap. In both cases, however, the hard part is not picking the tool but configuring it.
Yes I think serious practice is needed. There is something else that is a disadvantage: you need anyway to review your lecture notes; but since they are so beautiful you do not easily see mistakes; one way to avoid overly beautiful notes is to use a kind of draft font that deliberately looks a bit off. The drawings (with the keyholes ) are of path integrals with holomorphic functions (something I did around 1982)
But the whole idea and execution are phenomenal.
My feeling is that using emacs it could be possibly easier but I will not try to convert a vimmer