Chapter 3: Google NotebookLM

What is Google NotebookLM?

While Microsoft and OpenAI get a lot of hype with ChatGPT and Copilot, but Google has one thing that Microsoft doesn’t have: An AI-powered notetaker.

Google’s AI notetaker is called NotebookLM, and provides unique productivity benefits:

• It connects directly to your Google Docs and scans them to understand your work.

• Using this knowledge, NotebookLM can summarize notes, answer questions, and help organize your documents like a personalized AI assistant.

• This makes it great for writers, researchers, students or anyone who wants to boost efficiency.

• It’s completely free.

NotebookLM uses Google's latest natural language AI called Gemini to analyze text and collaborate with you on documents. It's like having an AI note-taking expert at your fingertips.

The key is that NotebookLM integrates directly with Docs rather than being a separate tool. This makes it easy to enhance existing workflows with AI.

Let's look at how to access NotebookLM's capabilities and start supercharging your productivity.

How To Access NotebookLM

If you're located in the United States, you can sign up and get started with NotebookLM directly using this link: notebooklm.google/signup.

However, things get a tad trickier if you're outside the U.S. At the time of writing this chapter, NotebookLM is only available in the U.S. (but it’ll expand to other countries shortly).

A simple workaround is to use a free VPN browser extension to access NotebookLM, which we detail below.

Download A Free VPN (If Outside The U.S.)

There are a few really good installable VPNs like Surfshark, NordVPN, or Proton, but for the sake of saving time (and money), we’re going to opt for a free browser option.

Simply download a browser app with a built-in VPN such as Brave, Opera, or Arc, enable the VPN, set your location to the United States, and you’ll be ready to use Google NotebookLM in about 30 seconds.

The VPN allows you to securely tunnel to the US so you can sign up for NotebookLM from anywhere in the world.

Once your account is created, you can turn off the VPN and continue using NotebookLM as normal. This quick setup gives you free access to NotebookLM's AI-powered productivity features globally.

Connect Your Existing Google Docs

A great feature of NotebookLM is that you don't need to recreate your notes — you can connect your existing Google Docs.

Here's how:

Step 1: In NotebookLM, click "New Source"

Step 2: Select the Google Docs you want to link to NotebookLM. You can connect as many as you need.

Step 3: NotebookLM will automatically scan and summarize your selected Docs by generating a helpful "Source Guide."

Connecting your Docs only takes just a few clicks and opens up NotebookLM's capabilities to enhance your existing workflow rather than starting from scratch.

You can think of this Source Guide as an AI-powered table of contents, pulling out key information from your documents. It also enables NotebookLM to better understand your work so it can assist you.

Ask Questions

Once your Google Docs are connected, NotebookLM automatically suggests questions in the Source Guide based on analyzing your content.

You can click these auto-generated questions to have NotebookLM instantly answer them using the knowledge from your documents.

For example, if you've linked research notes on self-driving cars, NotebookLM may ask "What are the benefits of self-driving cars?" and provide a summary answer from your docs.

You can also manually type or dictate any questions you have to further query your documents with NotebookLM. Think of it like having an AI research assistant.

The key is that linking your existing Docs allows NotebookLM to "read" and understand them so it can answer questions or summarize the content for you - no reformatting needed!

This question-answering capability supercharges your ability to review, learn from, and leverage your own work.

Change Formats

In addition to answering questions, NotebookLM can reformat your collected notes into new structured documents.

For example, you can:

• Select some notes and have NotebookLM turn them into a study guide.

• Ask NotebookLM to summarize your key insights from a research doc into a blog post draft.

• Convert meeting notes into a professional summary email to send to colleagues.

To do this, simply:

1. Select the relevant notes in NotebookLM.

2. Prompt it to create the desired new format, like "Turn these notes into a presentation."

3. NotebookLM will generate the new structured document for you!

This formatting capability allows you to easily repurpose and share knowledge from your connected Docs in new ways, and automate the way you organize your ideas.

Pin quotes

Whenever NotebookLM answers a question using your connected documents, it automatically includes quotes and citations from the original sources.

You can click on these quotes to instantly jump back to that section in the source Google Doc.

This allows you to quickly check the full context of the excerpt NotebookLM referenced.

The ability to pinpoint key quotes and passages from your documents helps you:

• Verify that NotebookLM's summaries are accurate to your sources.

• Easily reference important snippets by linking back to the original.

• Review key details in context rather than just NotebookLM's paraphrasing.

It's a great feature for ensuring transparency and traceability when using NotebookLM. The linked quotes keep you grounded in your original documents.

Chapter 3 Recap

In this chapter, you learned:

• What NotebookLM is and how it connects to Google Docs

• How to ask questions and get AI-powered summaries

• How to reformat notes into new document types

• How NotebookLM links key quotes back to original sources

The key takeaway is that NotebookLM integrates AI directly into your existing workflows to boost productivity.

Next, we'll explore research-backed techniques to improve any chatbot's responses using optimal prompting strategies.