How to Use NotebookLM (Google's AI "Tool for Understanding")
TL;DR
NotebookLM is Google's source-grounded AI tool that lets you upload up to 20 documents and have a conversational AI draw exclusively from those sources. It collapses reading, research, note-taking, and writing into a single integrated workspace, eliminating the need for manual organization. ---
Key Concepts
Source-grounded AI
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The AI only draws from documents you explicitly provide — no hallucinations from the open web, no mixing with other users' data
Notebook
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A self-contained workspace for a single project; holds all sources, conversations, and pinned responses
Context window
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NotebookLM supports up to 20 sources × 200,000 words each = 4 million words total — larger than any other AI tool at time of recording
Pin board
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A persistent space at the top of the interface where you save ("pin") AI responses you want to keep visible
Citations
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Every AI response links back to the exact passage in the source document, shown highlighted in context
Tools for thought
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The broader category of software (including second brains) aimed at augmenting human cognition — the conceptual lineage NotebookLM belongs to
Notes
§Getting Started
- Visit
notebooklm.google.com; sign in with a Gmail account - At time of filming: limited to US users aged 18+
- Create a new notebook with the
+button and give it a project-specific title - Three main interface areas:
- Left column — Sources panel
- Bottom box — Chat/conversation input
- Top area — Pin board for saved responses
§Adding Sources
- Three source types: Google Drive documents, PDF uploads, copy-pasted text
- Select up to 20 documents; each can be up to 200,000 words
- Clicking a source shows an AI-generated summary and key topics, plus full scrollable content
- You can add a new inline note at any time via "Add note" — paste text from anywhere (email, web, another app)
§Core Workflow
- Load multiple related sources to enable cross-document synthesis
- Ask questions conversationally; follow up to expand, distill, reformat, or redirect
- Use suggested questions (pre-generated, context-specific) as jumping-off points
- Pin responses you want to keep; otherwise the conversation is ephemeral
- Citations let you trace every claim back to its source passage with surrounding context
§Use Case: Understanding Difficult Material
- Upload a complex PDF (e.g., academic paper)
- Ask plain-language questions to get summaries and explanations
- Drill into specific confusing points with follow-up questions
- Ask it to reformat findings into a letter, memo, or argument for a specific audience
§Use Case: Meeting Notes / Transcripts
- Upload a full meeting transcript (tested with a 26-page / 12,000-word Google Doc)
- Ask for main points, decisions, or action items
- Extend further: ask it to draft a proposal, curriculum, or follow-up document based on the conversation
- Safe to upload proprietary content — sources are not used to train any model and are wiped when you leave the notebook
§Use Case: Writing — Editorial Mode
- Upload a draft as a source
- Ask for improvement suggestions, then ask for a full rewrite following those suggestions
- Add a second source (e.g., notes from a book on writing craft) and ask it to rewrite the draft applying advice from that book
- Citations show exactly which advice from the reference book was applied
§Use Case: Writing — Ideation Mode
- Start with one source (e.g., book notes) and ask for related ideas or research avenues
- Add a second source and ask for connections between the two books
- Narrow toward a specific angle, add more sources, ask for article title ideas → outline → opening lines
- Demonstrates going from no idea → compelling opening paragraph through iterative conversation
§Getting Your Notes into NotebookLM via Readwise
- Readwise (paid) syncs highlights from Kindle, Readwise Reader, and other sources to Google Docs
- Go to Readwise → Export → connect Google Docs (same account as NotebookLM)
- Key setting: keep "send each source to its own Google Doc" enabled so you can selectively choose individual books/articles as sources
- If disabled, all highlights merge into one or a few docs — useful for conversing with your entire reading history at once but harder to filter
- Run the export; a
readwisefolder appears in Google Drive, ready to use as NotebookLM sources
§Limitations
- Experimental platform — bugs and learning curve expected
- Cannot connect directly to note-taking apps (Evernote, Notion, Google Keep) — must use an intermediary like Readwise
- Hard limit of 20 sources per notebook
- Struggles with math, messy PDF formatting, and precise detail retrieval in very large sources
- Team confirmed fixes and improvements are in progress
Actionable Takeaways
- Create a NotebookLM account at
notebooklm.google.comand start one notebook for a current project - Connect Readwise to Google Docs to automatically export book/article highlights as individual Google Docs, making them ready for NotebookLM
- When uploading a long transcript or document, ask for main points first, then progressively ask for deliverables (proposal, curriculum, letter)
- Use the pin board immediately — save any response worth keeping before continuing the conversation
- Add a writing-craft reference (e.g., notes from a book on writing) as a second source when revising drafts to get style-informed rewrites with citations
- Keep the "one source per Google Doc" setting enabled in Readwise to stay within the 20-source limit while retaining selectivity
Quotes Worth Keeping
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You point the AI at a specific set of documents, effectively giving it instant expertise in whatever knowledge they contain — so you always know it's only drawing on authoritative, private, trusted information.
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Until now, the stages of the creative process — reading, researching, note-taking, and writing — were completely separate. NotebookLM gets all those steps and folds them into a single integrated space so you can remain in that wonderful flow state and keep moving forward.
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It's an AI collaborator trained on the data only you possess, with your unique view of the world.