I never really set out to ditch Notion. It’s been my home base for years, even though my notes and pages are a mess; it feels familiar. But I’ve tried a lot of PKM alternatives this year, and naturally started shifting away from Notion - it’s just not possible to use all of them at the same time. Another tool that’s been intertwined with my life this year is NotebookLM. I use it for most things related to study and research.

After setting up NotebookLM as a PKM tool, I realized it actually does replace some of the functions of a dedicated management tool. I’ve pretty much entirely moved my Notion work to NotebookLM at this point, without even realizing it. Between NotebookLM’s AI features and other better PKM apps out there, leaving Notion is surprisingly easy.

Why even replace Notion?

It’s not the be-all and end-all of productivity anymore

Notion used to feel unbeatable - if you wanted one app that could do everything, you built your workflow in there. A lot of the value comes from building personalized dashboards and using databases to keep track of your projects. This is great if you don’t mind consistently managing and updating your system, but eventually, you can hit a point where the setup becomes like a full-time side project. The landscape of digital productivity is different now. Not only are there Notion alternatives that are more minimal and frictionless, but throw NotebookLM into the mix, an AI that acts as your second brain, and it almost feels like Notion becomes an unnecessary weight, or even obsolete.

There are various other reasons people might want to shift away from Notion. For starters, loading times can be very slow if you’re working with large workspaces and databases. The offline and mobile app experiences are also still not where they're supposed to be - NotebookLM doesn’t solve this either, with needing an internet connection, but it never claimed to be an all-in-one productivity tool like Notion. And lastly, Notion AI doesn’t come close to NotebookLM; the summaries are subpar at best. Whatever someone’s reason for drifting from Notion, NotebookLM is capable of replacing many of its functions.

Notion functionalities that NotebookLM replaces

NotebookLM is a decent PKM tool… if you use it right

I mainly used Notion as a way to store my research, manage tasks, and track my projects with databases. Building out pages with custom widgets was a plus - but it’s honestly not really necessary and just created distracting clutter for me. So, which of these Notion functions did NotebookLM actually replace for me?

First up is notes. I don’t consider NotebookLM a notes app, at least that’s not what I primarily used it for at first. But I’ve successfully set it up as a notes app by mostly relying on its Note function. It’s basically just a panel in the app where you can take notes using rich text. It comes complete with formatting options like headers, bullets, bold, italics, and more. The obvious added benefit to NotebookLM’s Notes is that you can add them as sources in a notebook, or the other way around, where you save NotebookLM’s responses as notes. And of course, NotebookLM’s AI is much more advanced, so I prefer interacting with my notes there rather than Notion’s AI.

Managing research, documents, and projects in NotebookLM is also a breeze. It’s kind of what the app was made for. It lets you upload a range of documents - PDFs, Markdown files, and Google Docs - so I was actually able to transfer some of my Notion documents to NotebookLM. Sure, it doesn’t have a linking system, but you don’t need that when you can prompt the AI to retrieve whatever you want in seconds. Plus, the Mind Map function gives you a visual overview of how everything is interconnected. This is actually more convenient than setting up backlinks in Notion.

Same with databases - the prompts and responses replace them. You won’t get interactive tables, but the AI is designed to extract whatever you want in whichever format you want. Again, it’s a much easier system than configuring and maintaining a bunch of databases. The only caveat here is that NotebookLM automatically names your sources and everything you generate in the Studio panel. I recommend renaming them so you know exactly which documents you’re interacting with - kind of like how you would title pages in Notion or name your table entries.

Of course, extracting information takes a bit of prompt engineering, too. And always save the best responses to a note so you don't lose track of it - NotebookLM still doesn't have chat history.

NotebookLM doesn’t replace the entirety of Notion

It’s a completely different type of app, after all

As we know, NotebookLM has a completely different architecture than Notion. For one, you won’t be able to customize your chat panels or upload images. So if you like creating dashboards with images and widgets and the whole lot, NotebookLM isn’t the Notion replacement for you. Different views with Kanban boards and galleries are also out the window. I don’t mind this shortcoming because, as I’ve mentioned, dashboards and unique setups can get overwhelming and distracting.

Another major thing that NotebookLM can’t replace, at least not as of yet, is calendars. It’s a bit ironic that Notion integrates with Google Calendar while NotebookLM, a Google product, doesn’t. Plus, you can set up custom calendars and integrate it directly with your project/task management in Notion. This is a feature I would like to see in NotebookLM at some point. You can, however, export your calendar data then import it into NotebookLM, if that’s something you’d like to give a go.

There’s no need for Notion when you make the most of NotebookLM

Apples and oranges, I know. But an app is only as good as how you use it. If you carefully curate your NotebookLM notebooks and give the right prompts, plus utilize the extra features, then there really is no need for Notion. I doubt NotebookLM will be an effective replacement for Notion power users, but, as demonstrated in all my productivity articles at XDA, I like to keep things simple. Which is exactly why NotebookLM seemed to have slowly pushed Notion out of my life without me even noticing.