As someone constantly juggling multiple projects, endless documents and files, and navigating a sea of information, I have discovered a powerful ally in NotebookLM. Formerly known as Project Tailwind, this AI-powered tool has fundamentally transformed how I manage knowledge, extract information, and, ultimately, get things done. Over time, I have compiled a collection of tips and tricks that have significantly supercharged my workflow, and I'm excited to share these insights with you.
Related
10 ways you can use AI to improve your productivity
From help managing your schedule, to writing emails, AI can make you a lot more productive
Posts 1
What is NotebookLM?
Before we go over NotebookLM tips, let's have a quick word about it. There is no shortage of AI tools out there. However, they primarily focus on taking notes and offer AI as an optional add-on. NotebookLM has a different approach here.
It acts as an AI collaborator and assists with tasks like research, writing, and information synthesis. The aim is to streamline the process of extracting insights from large or complex sets of documents. You can simply create a new notebook, upload relevant documents and web URLs, and let Gemini-powered AI generate summaries, outlines, and other content. The idea is to manage and analyze information more efficiently.
Researchers, writers, students, and professionals can use it to process large volumes of text and speed up their workflow in no time. Without further ado, let's check it in action.
5 Summarize information from different sources
No need to refer to materials manually
Close
This is the biggest USP of NotebookLM. Suppose you want to learn about building a home lab. You can head to NotebookLM, create a new notebook called Home Lab and start adding sources to it. You can insert articles from XDA-developers for hardware and software configurations, user manuals for servers, network devices, and other equipment, YouTube tutorials, PDFs containing network diagrams, budget spreadsheets or project plans, and Google Docs with notes.
NotebookLM's AI analyzes the content of each source and understands the relationships between different pieces of information. Instead of summarizing each source individually, it can synthesize information across all your sources.
For example, it can extract recommended hardware components from various articles and user manuals, step-by-step setup instructions from video transcripts and documentation, and budgeting information from spreadsheets. At any point, you can ask specific questions like What are the common networking configurations used with proxmox?, and NotebookLM will search across your documents and provide a relevant answer. You can also ask What are the pros and cons of using a raspberry pi as a home server?, and get a compiled response.
You can basically create a local search engine in NotebookLM and solve your queries. Recently, I wanted to learn about Python integration in Excel. I gathered relevant articles, YouTube videos, and online sources, uploaded them to my Python notebook, and started asking NotebookLM relevant questions to get started.
NotebookLM doesn't store your document data to train its AI models.
Related
4 great AI tools to improve your productivity
These great AI tools will help you get work done faster.
Posts
4 Add relevant notes
Save AI summaries
When you use AI summaries, you will come across valuable information that you want to refer to later. You can select Save to note at the bottom and create a note. NotebookLM also offers several options for creating a note. For example, you can create a Study guide and generate a relevant note accordingly. Similarly, you can click Briefing doc, Timeline, or FAQ and save notes.
The only issue is that you can't edit a generated note. You must click add a note and write down a note with all the formatting options.
3 Create mind maps
Visualize your research
If you want to understand complex relationships and grasp key concepts, create a mind map out of a summary. NotebookLM analyzes your source documents and generates a mind map that visually summarizes the main topics and their connections. This branching diagram format helps you see how different ideas relate to each other. You can even save a mind map as an image and share it with others.
2 Create an audio overview
Explore NotebookLM studio
NotebookLM's audio generation capability adds a powerful dimension to how you can interact with and digest information. You can generate a natural-sounding audio description of your uploaded documents or generated notes.
This allows you to consume information in an auditory format, which can be particularly useful for multitasking or when visual reading is inconvenient.
1 Collaborate with team members
Share your research with others
Once a notebook is ready, you can invite team members to it. You can choose to share an entire notebook or restrict the permission to chat only. My favorite part is a welcome note. I always make sure to add a welcome note to set the context. When a team member or colleague opens a notebook for the first time, NotebookLM shows a welcome note to make them familiar with your research.
10x your productivity with NotebookLM
As you can see from the list above, NotebookLM is more than just a note-taking tool. By leveraging its AI capabilities, I have reclaimed valuable time and unlocked new levels of efficiency. Whether you're a researcher, writer, student, or professional, NotebookLM can be a handy tool to unlock a significant boost in productivity and clarity.
NotebookLM is still in its early stages, and I can't wait to see how Google takes it to the next level with frequent updates. Go ahead, give it a try and see if Google's experimental tool fits in your workflow. If it doesn't work for you, check out these AI note-taking tools.
NotebookLM
See at NotebookLM
