I’ve been using NotebookLM almost every day this year. It’s my research assistant, creative writing partner, even my design tutor - it’s become like my second brain without me even realizing it. But even though it’s powerful, it’s easy to use it wrong or not get the most out of it. Many users (including myself) fall into habits that can make NotebookLM feel underwhelming at times. Most of the time, it’s not the tool’s fault, but in how we use it.

My colleagues have already written about NotebookLM mistakes to avoid and what they’d do differently if starting over. But I want to cover a couple of common pitfalls that I don’t see discussed very often. These few, simple tweaks to how you use NotebookLM can really shift how effective it is.

Not merging your documents

You don’t need to be restricted by the source limit

You probably already know about the source limit of 50. Even the paid version caps the sources at 300. This basically just comes down to computational restraints - having the app process thousands of sources at a time would slow it down significantly, making it difficult to use. Unfortunately, reaching 50 sources happens faster than you realize. I’ve filled up three notebooks in the span of a month for my design course.

But luckily, NotebookLM allows up to 500,000 words per source - that’s about the length of five real books! This gives you a lot of wiggle room. So instead of wasting slots on small files and creating more notebooks, I highly recommend merging your documents wherever it makes sense. For Google Docs, all you need to do is copy-paste from one doc into another, but you can also use an add-on like Document Merge for Google Docs for large batches of documents. For PDFs, you can merge them using OmniTools’ PDF Merge tool; it’s free.

It might be worth making distinct divisions in the documents, such as line inserts or indicating when a new topic starts with text. And keep in mind that each source is capped at 200MB, so remove images and other heavies from your documents (which NotebookLM can’t read anyway).

Not naming your sources properly

Your future self will thank you

NotebookLM uses the official titles of the documents you upload, including Google Docs, PDFs, web links, and YouTube videos. For text sources, it automatically generates titles based on its analysis of the content. And it does a pretty decent job; my text inputs usually get titles that make sense. And then, NotebookLM sorts all your sources in alphabetical order by default. Despite how efficient this naming system is, I always end up renaming many of my sources.

Even though NotebookLM does the heavy lifting, I still like to interact with sources manually and be selective, so I need to know where each one is, and they need to be sorted by priority. But because everything is alphabetical, I can end up with two priority sources on the opposite ends of 30 files. Instead of scrolling back and forth, I add numbers at the front of the sources that I want to keep at the top of the list, starting with 01, 02, 03, and so on. This way, my most-used sources are within immediate reach. I also do this with some of the sources I reach for the least, so I can quickly remove them from my source selection.

The number method is simply what works best for me, but I do recommend using some type of naming system to help you spot priority sources or sort them in a specific order.

Not routinely saving chats outside of the app

Don’t let NotebookLM's biggest downside affect your workflow

One of my, and probably everyone’s, biggest gripes with NotebookLM is that it doesn't store chats. Once you close a notebook, your prompts and their answers are lost forever. One way of preserving them is using the “Save as Note” button. And you should definitely keep doing this until NotebookLM introduces chat history.

But I also recommend saving your chats outside the app to have a copy just in case. If you’re a messy worker like me, there’s always the possibility of deleting the wrong notebook (yes, I’ve done this) or perhaps some other disaster strikes, like a server shutdown. Because Docs and NotebookLM are both Google and both use rich text, copying over the answers is seamless and preserves the formatting. So whenever I get a really valuable response, I just hit the little copy button and put it inside a Doc. Sometimes I upload that document as a source later on, too.

Keeping NotebookLM as useful as possible

NotebookLM is no doubt one of the most powerful AI tools I’ve ever used. But, like every AI, it’s really only as good as the way you use it. The source cap is a concern for many users, but it really doesn’t have to be if you know how to maximize the space in each file. The lack of version history is annoying, but the solution is dead simple - just save the chats elsewhere. And if you’re having trouble navigating your sources, just rename them. These tweaks are so simple, but they really changed how much use I get out of NotebookLM.