A lot of people think of NotebookLM as a research tool (and it works great as such!). But I rarely use it that way. I mostly use it to work through my thoughts into it and create an analysis that helps me refine what I’m thinking.
I created a notebook and added all 93 posts I published daily during Q1 of 2026. I then used the tool to chat with my thoughts and visualize, hear, and see them outside my mind.
All of the content came from my understanding acquired over the years, through personal experiences and sources (books, videos, people) that inspired me to try something.
Mindmap
The mind map shows what was on my mind throughout the quarter.
I find it interesting to see “Cognitive Science” in there. When I expand that node, it makes sense: I’ve been thinking a lot about visual and verbal thinking styles, and I remember revisiting multithreading and multitasking, but I didn’t naturally think of those as cognitive science. I had also never thought of the phrase “automaticity in skill development,” and I’m glad it’s a new addition to my vocabulary. Now connections and awareness are made.
Infographic
This image illustrates my thoughts in the quarter. I’d likely tweak it so that “values to solution” reads top-to-bottom, but it’s impressive that it was created without any specific prompt.
Video Overview
I always want to create visual artifacts to accompany my posts, but I don’t have the skills to do so in a reasonable amount of time. The cinematic video overview is incredible!
At the end of the year, when I’m gathering information to reflect and write my annual review, I’ll watch this video.
Deep Dive
The deep-dive audio overview (two hosts discussing the content, podcast-style) helps me hear my thoughts through different voices and perspectives. It felt weird at first, but I got used to it and now appreciate it as another way to slow down my thoughts.
One thing I noticed is that one of the points discussed in the overview didn’t quite align with how I thought of it. If somebody else listens to it, they may get an inaccurate view. Maybe the way it was synthesized reflects how I described it, so listening to that makes me want to rethink how I articulate those thoughts.
I also wrote down another thought I want to explore: the overview mentioned the bit about multitasking and multithreading, driving and speaking on the phone at the same time, and the different contexts. I want to explore the thought of comparing a regular passenger in a car and a navigator in a rally car.
Because I created some posts directly from transcripts of talks I gave, listening back to the deep dive made me revisit some of those topics, reminding me I have way more context in my mind than the podcast hosts are saying. That made me think of podcasts I listen to with real people; how much context is missing that could help me relate to the content more? Maybe there are images the hosts and guests have in mind or in their photo libraries that could make the content click immediately.
Slide Decks
I created both presenter and detailed decks. Those are both great! Here’s one slide from each…
Presenter Slides
Detailed Deck
Some of the slides are fantastic. They give me different ways to refine my thoughts, as well as artifacts I can have ready when creating new content, be it posts or talks.
Reports
The ‘reports’ feature’s first row shows the default options. The second row, ‘Suggested Format’ is very interesting, as it’s created based in the sources in the notebook:
I’ve used the “Stakeholder Engagement Playbook” to generate a blog post:
I’ll publish that post tomorrow.
Data Table
The Data Table also produces another way to analyze my content. I prompted it with this:
Create a table with the main areas in these sources, with their main insights.
Link to Chat
Last but not least, here’s a link if you’d like to chat with virtual me (you don’t get to hear my accent, though):
Let me know if you give that a try. I don’t know if I’ll keep that link open or for how long. This is an experiment.
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