2.3 – Asking Questions With Chat Lesson

Lesson Overview

The strength of Google NotebookLM lies in using AI-powered chat to make the most out of the documents and notes you’ve assembled. This lesson focuses on practical ways to ask insightful questions, so you can pull out the most relevant and actionable content from your own digital library. Instead of passively reading through source material, you’ll learn how to have an interactive “conversation” with your notes. This makes it possible to quickly surface major themes, actionable steps, and even potential challenges or risks tied to your project or area of study.

Understanding how to prompt the chat for specifics—like requesting results in a bullet list or summarizing in just a few words—saves time and organizes information in the way you need it. This lesson sits at the heart of the course, as the ability to ask effective questions is what turns your notebooks into flexible, living resources. Whether you’re preparing a report, planning a lesson, or brainstorming business ideas, you’ll see how custom prompts can streamline your workflow and expand what’s possible with NotebookLM.

Who This Is For

Asking the right questions in NotebookLM is a valuable skill for anyone looking to work smarter with their digital information. This content is ideal for:

• Students wanting concise study notes and exam prep material
• Educators needing to pull lesson takeaways or structure classroom summaries
• Business professionals extracting action items or key trends from reports
• Content creators gathering highlights for articles or social posts
• Analysts seeking rapid insights from lengthy datasets or research documents
• Anyone new to AI-powered tools who wants to make querying easier and more effective

Where This Fits in a Workflow

This lesson builds on setting up your NotebookLM and adding sources by focusing on how to actually “talk to” your content. You’ll use these question strategies whenever you want to review, summarize, or refine information quickly—such as before drafting a presentation, preparing for a meeting, or planning a new project.

For example, after importing project documents, you can immediately ask, “What are the top five takeaways?” Or, if you’re preparing learning resources, you might prompt, “List actionable steps for students from this chapter.” Being able to shape responses to fit your needs helps you turn a pile of materials into clear, focused outputs ready for real-world use.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Previously, digging through notes or reports meant reading everything and manually sorting out key information. Using prompt-based chat in NotebookLM, you can quickly cue the AI to extract summaries, lists, or actionable advice with just a well-phrased question. This is not only faster, but also lets you decide on the format—bullets, tables, or concise statements.

For instance, if you want LinkedIn post ideas, you can request, “Summarize five key points from this notebook in bullet form.” When you need to identify challenges or applications tied to your sources, prompts such as, “What are potential risks?” or, “Where can this information be applied?” generate ready-to-use content with no copy-pasting or lengthy edits. This lets you focus on decision-making and creativity instead of endless skimming.

Practice Exercise

Pick a notebook in your own NotebookLM workspace that contains at least two imported documents or notes. Complete these steps:

1. In the chat prompt box, type: “What are three actionable steps based on this information?”
2. Now ask for a specific format: “List the top five takeaways as a numbered list.”
3. Save one response as a note and convert it into a new source.

Reflect: Did specifying the format (bulleted or numbered list) make the response more helpful for your needs? Compare the usefulness of a general vs. a formatted answer.

Course Context Recap

This lesson is a key bridge in your Google NotebookLM learning path. After opening and organizing your knowledge base, you now know how to actively ask questions to bring structure and clarity to your information. Next, the course will introduce more advanced AI-driven tools within NotebookLM to boost your productivity and deepen your ability to analyze documents. Continue with the course to unlock even more ways to get value out of your notes and sources.