When I first started using NotebookLM, I was using it the way I thought you’re supposed to: feed it some sources and prompt it for summaries. But over time, I realized it’s way more powerful if you fine-tune your workflows and build some habits around it. What you upload matters, but how you organize your sources and interact with NotebookLM is just as important.

After using it daily for most of this year, I’ve started picking up a few small routines that change how useful NotebookLM feels. Although prompts are important, these are simple habits that go beyond prompt engineering. And I wish I had started doing them way sooner…

Keeping my folders synced to Google Drive

Instant access to all my documents

This is something I probably should have done even before using NotebookLM because syncing your folders to Google Drive has benefits beyond the NotebookLM integration. Drive is now my primary syncing and backup tool for my plain text files, PDF files, and other text-based documents. Most of it goes into a dedicated folder on my PC, which syncs automatically to my Drive, and I can access it from any device.

The cool thing about Drive is how smoothly it integrates with NotebookLM. This year, Google also added the ability to search your Drive directly within NotebookLM using plain language, so I don’t have to remember the exact file titles or which folder hierarchy they’re stored in anymore.

I can create PDF files or text documents in any app – AFFiNE, Obsidian, or any random web-based open-source editor – and by simply saving it to my synced folder, it instantly becomes accessible to me within NotebookLM. It’s one of the smoothest integrations I’ve ever used.

Renaming my sources

So that I can keep up with NotebookLM

My files tend to have names like “editifinaledit2” or “untitled 382”. Luckily, NotebookLM automatically assigns titles to the files you upload, and they’re pretty accurate. But there are still a couple of issues this doesn’t solve. For one, everything is sorted in alphabetical order, so your files aren’t necessarily sorted in order of priority. I like to be selective with my sources and keep my most-used docs at the top of the list, so I rename and prefix them with numbers 01, 02, and so on.

Secondly, while the way NotebookLM names your sources doesn’t change how it summarizes and analyzes the content of the sources, it does influence how I interact with them. Giving some of my sources either more specific or more minimal names makes it easy for my eyes to quickly spot what to select. The same goes for Notes in NotebookLM – giving them proper titles is essential to know exactly what you’re working with.

Feeding it my own writing

NotebookLM is great for personal analysis

While most of us use NotebookLM to make the learning process quicker and more streamlined, it doubles as a personal productivity tool. I started feeding it my own writing, including novel drafts, journal entries, personal achievements, and random notes. NotebookLM treats this text just the same as academic material. You can ask it for patterns in your thoughts and behavior, timelines of whatever journey you’re on, or comparisons between older and newer notes so you can see progression.

And it’s great for creative writers and novelists, too. I’ve already written about how NotebookLM makes me a better writer, but the rundown: you can fact-check your own story, retrieve forgotten ideas, and surface connections or plot holes you didn’t know existed. So I highly recommend adding sources that aren’t just for academic or research work. And the more consistently you update the notebook, the better the results will be.

Immediately creating a mind map

This is a must for visual thinkers

Everyone probably knows by now that NotebookLM has a mind map feature in its Studio panel. I used to mostly ignore this and opted for dedicated diagramming and mind mapping tools instead. But NotebookLM’s mind mapper is a little powerhouse of its own. You get a very concise and accurately-linked map of all your selected sources, and the coolest thing is that the map is interactive. Clicking the arrows expands and collapses the branches, and clicking on a branch takes you straight to the chat panel with a comprehensive breakdown.

If you’re a visual thinker like me, I recommend doing this first before diving into the rest of the work. It gives you a foundational visual reference that you can revisit at any point.

Keeping a couple of “scratchpad” notebooks

Just in case

Sometimes I want to use NotebookLM just to try something new or to store some links I might use later. Given each notebook is limited to 50 sources, I didn’t want to fill up my existing notebooks with stuff I might not even use. Now, I always keep a couple of miscellaneous "discard pile" notebooks. This is where I test new features and new methods, and also dump random notes that aren’t particularly useful for anything yet. I do this for some of my articles too – create a new notebook that resembles my other notebooks, but minus some of the more personal documents that I'm not keen on displaying.

Making NotebookLM more useful with tiny habits

None of these habits are major, but they make a big impact over time, and I probably would have gotten more use out of NotebookLM if I’d started doing them sooner. I’m still refining how I use the tool, but these little tweaks and routines are enough to keep my workflow efficient.