The Rundown: In today’s tutorial, I’m going to show you the most effective way to learn any subject with AI. We’ll be using a very underrated tool - NotebookLM - and combining it with ChatGPT to maximize retention, understanding, and speed.

Who is this useful for:

• Students preparing for exams
• Professionals upskilling in AI, business, or technical fields
• Content creators building summaries or explainer videos
• Lifelong learners who want to study faster and smarter

STEP 1: Getting started and accessing Notebook LM

First of all, head over to notebooklm.google.com.

On the homepage, click the “+” button. This opens a new notebook where you can add your study materials. NotebookLM supports multiple sources, but for best results, use PDFs.

For example, let’s upload a PDF copy of “AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models” by Chip Huyen

STEP 2: Enter the studio and choose your preferred output

Once your PDF is uploaded, NotebookLM processes it and offers you several study modes:

• Summary – A concise overview of the text
• Mind Map – Visual connections between concepts
• Audio Overview – AI-generated narration of the material
• Video Overview – A podcast-style explainer with visuals

The Video Overview is a new feature and great at increasing understanding. It creates a presentation-style explanation of your material that feels like a mini YouTube lecture.

STEP 3: Generate study guides from your uploaded book file

Visit the Reports → Study Guide section.

Here, NotebookLM generates:

• Q&A sets to test comprehension
• Short-answer questions (e.g., “What’s the difference between masked language models and autoregressive models?”)
• Essay-style prompts
• Glossaries of key terms

This structured approach gives you a step-by-step way to internalize the material, not just skim it.

STEP 4: Deepen understanding with ChatGPT

Now that you have the summaries, guides, and video overview from NotebookLM, bring your PDF into ChatGPT.

Here’s how to maximize it:

1. Upload your book (must be PDF - EPUBs are not supported).
2. Prompt ChatGPT with:
3. • “Read this book chapter by chapter and highlight all confusing parts.”
   • “Extract the core ideas I must understand from this text.”
   • “Quiz me on the most important concepts.”
3. For better results, toggle on higher-quality reasoning modes with GPT-5 Thinking.

STEP 5: Putting it all together

This combination of starting in NotebookLM and ending in ChatGPT lets you:

• Get quick context (NotebookLM)
• Learn interactively (Study Guide + Q&A)
• Go deep and clarify tricky parts (ChatGPT)

Pro Tip: If your source is in EPUB or audiobook format, convert it to PDF before uploading. Both NotebookLM and ChatGPT handle PDFs best.

This workflow completely changes how you approach learning. With practice, you’ll retain more, learn faster, and even generate high-quality study content that matches a classroom experience.