Thoughts Brewing Blog

How to Use NotebookLM to Summarize and Spark New Ideas

Written by Danielle Price Griffin | Jan 28, 2026 2:15:00 PM

Drowning in unread PDFs, emails, and those random videos your co-worker keeps sending you to watch? NotebookLM might be the fastest way out.

Google’s new-ish AI tool turns research overwhelm into a few clean bullet points, a nice audio overview, an easy to follow infographic, or even a pitch-perfect slide deck. 

How? It’s pretty easy to get started. Upload your documents, and NotebookLM will summarize, synthesize, and highlight key ideas…without the painful skimming while missing key pieces of info.

One Quick Workflow to Try

Pick three articles or videos you’ve been meaning to read or watch. Upload them into a NotebookLM notebook. Then ask:

“Summarize each document/video in 2–3 bullet points, focusing on the main argument or takeaway.”

You’ll get the highlights in seconds. From there, you can ask:

  • “Can you combine these into one summary?”
  • “What are 3-5 blog topics I could create from this content?”

It feels like cheating a bit, but you really get your time back with this new (and fun) way to cut through the noise so you can spend more time thinking and less time sifting.


How It Works Differently From ChatGPT/Gemini

NotebookLM works from your content, not generic internet sources. That means the summaries and ideas are grounded in what actually matters to you. This also helps reduce the amount of hallucinations.

Beginners love it because you don’t need fancy prompts and can just get started by asking the questions they’d ask a smart, well-organized friend.