I only started taking NotebookLM seriously a while ago. I treated it more like a notetaking app that has an AI layer. But the more I used it and started feeding it my thoughts, it clicked. It’s not that NotebookLM makes me more productive now, it just helps me free up mental bandwidth. I don’t have to hold everything in my head or keep circling back to half-baked thoughts over and over.

I’ve ended up using NotebookLM in ways that are sideways from how it was designed and what Google had intended. Not the study buddy cases you see in promo and tutorial videos, but little hacks that make my mind feel clearer and less crammed. Here’s what’s been working for me so far…

Turning bookmark clutter into playlists

I don't mindlessly hoard bookmarks anymore

At any given point, I have about five bookmark folders in my browser with 50+ pages saved in each. When I come across an interesting read or something that could be useful later, I have to safe keep it. These bookmark folders were somewhat structured before — one for design courses and learning materials, another for mental health resources, and one for IMDb lists, you get the idea. The problem is, I seldom circled back to all of these pages, and when I did, it was by randomly clicking on things and being surprised at what popped up.

So, I started pulling these links into NotebookLM instead. Firstly, it helped me find a better organizational structure than I had with the folders, sorting them into categories that made more sense (after I prompted it to). It also created a summary of each page for me, highlighting the key ideas so I can get a quick overview of what’s inside. This made it much easier to decipher whether a bookmark was worth keeping or discarding — a lot of pages didn’t end up making the cut.

Now I have a better bookmark system that I can actually act on without getting overwhelmed and avoiding it. I also have another bookmark folder, “NotebookLM”, which serves as the first dump ground for anything I bookmark. Every so often, I put all those pages through NotebookLM to see what’s worth keeping and shift it to a relevant folder, or get rid of it. This system is kind of like music playlists with defined genres consisting only of songs I actually like and can easily shuffle through.

Notes junk drawer, sorted

Finally, a way to sort through every piece of text

My notes apps are all junk drawers — seriously, it’s a mess. Copied text from articles, meeting notes, fragments of ideas, things I note down, or paste “just in case”. This concoction of notes piles up fast. I’ve tried using other AI tools like ChatGPT to help me organize and make sense of it, but with little success, as those chats also just end up in cluttered chaos.

Enter NotebookLM. It turned out to be the easiest way to clean this up. I drop all my messy text into a notebook and ask it to organize it into categories first and foremost. The Mind Map feature also comes in very handy because it gives me a visual overview so I can easily make connections between my notes.

More than that, I also use NotebookLM as a sort of “second opinion.” If I’m staring at 20 half-baked notes, I’ll ask which ones are worth keeping and elaborating on, and which I can ignore. This doesn’t mean I’ll always follow the AI’s judgment, but it lets me offload a lot of decision fatigue by helping me stop treating every line of text like it’s sacred.

As explained in this NotebookLM-as-a-second-brain feature, I can also resurface my ideas more easily. For example, if I want to reflect on a specific part of my design learning of the week, perhaps colors, I ask NotebookLM to bring forth everything related to that topic from my notes.

My “anti-overwhelm” handbook

A quick way to get to the sources I need

This method applies to any topic, but I've found it to be most helpful for my mental health arsenal. I’ve collected more mental health resources than I care to admit — PDFs from practitioners, articles, and social media threads. The problem is, once overwhelm hits, the last thing I want to do is scour through these sources to find what I need in the moment. NotebookLM has become a shortcut for this…

By consistently dropping my mental health resources and learning into the notebook, I can describe the situation I’m dealing with in a prompt, and NotebookLM will surface the most relevant material for that scenario. Not only that, but it will also give me a more digestible summary of the information, so I don’t have to read all the sources or my own notes again.

It’s like outsourcing some of the executive function work of remembering and choosing, so I can focus on my coping strategies right away. For example, if the issue relates to sleep, I don't want to dig through a list of panic or identity resources — I can quickly be reminded of the strategies I've created to deal with said sleep issue, along with the sources I based the strategy on.

Less clutter, more headspace

NotebookLM wasn’t a tool I expected to integrate to this degree, but it ended up carving out a little space in my head. And I’m not even using it to become a productivity machine or help me with every decision, I’m just using it to help clear out a bit of mental clutter so I can actually think. It’s always these sideways use cases of a tool that end up sticking - so instead of a study buddy, NotebookLM is more like my mental sieve.