As an avid reader, I am always seeking new ways to enrich my reading experience.

I read around 30 books a year- and I had three main problems:

1. Storing the knowledge I gained

2. Finding books in the genres I like, that expand upon the idea of my favorites

3. Getting stuck with a bad book, and then dropping it later

I wanted to get a holistic understanding of the topics I am interested in- finance, business, neuroscience, and tech.

But too often, I found myself losing the knowledge (thanks knowledge decay!) or getting stuck with a book I did not enjoy.

Enter Notion and specifically, Notion AI.

I built a personalized “ Smart” Knowledge Hub in Notion- and this is how I use it!

Context-based-AI is a superpower

The key strength of Notion AI is its ability to infer context from your own databases. For the AI-powered library, this is like having Amazon’s recommendation algorithm inside your system.

I use a feature called “custom AI blocks”.

You can set these up in Notion by creating a template and creating this by using the space bar (to summon Notion AI) and typing Custom AI block.

Check out this Twitter thread.

Then, set this to default, and any new page you create now has these AI blocks ready to go!

These blocks can then be run using the “Generate” button and they will derive the context from your page!

Summarizing, recommendations and more using AI

One of the most beneficial features of Notion AI is its ability to summarize articles and books. With its advanced natural language processing capabilities, Notion AI can efficiently and accurately summarize even the longest and most intricate texts.

This has saved me considerable time and has allowed me to grasp the core of a piece of writing before deciding whether or not to read it or listen to it entirely. I recently wrote an article on the use cases of Notion AI here.

Notion AI can also generate short biographies of authors. By analyzing their works and other available information, Notion AI can provide a brief overview of an author’s life and work.

This has helped me gain context and a deeper understanding of the books I read, find other books by the same authors and even find authors and books in similar genres.

Finding these works that support, complement, or even oppose ideas that I have come across greatly helps me develop a holistic understanding of the topics that I am interested in!

If you care about Goodreads ratings, Notion AI finds them for you too, along with the link for the book on Amazon, all using the custom AI blocks.

Organization helps recall

In his book “Building a Second Brain”, author Tiago Forte describes the importance of knowledge organization and recall.

If you can’t recall what you learn at will- is it even useful?

In addition to the AI features, Notion also enables me to easily organize my reading materials. I can create reading lists and categorize them according to topic, genre, or any other criteria.

This has helped me keep track of what I’ve read and what I want to read next. I can also sort them by year to see if I am on track with my reading goals!

Knowledge retention is key

In addition to organization, the two key aspects to getting the best out of knowledge media are knowledge retention and action. After all, action helps you best absorb any new habits or changes you are trying to imbibe.

I use a simple note-taking system where I copy and paste relevant paragraphs from the books I read and then ask AI to summarize them into bullet points.

In books like Atomic Habits, there are often action items or steps to take to imbibe the learnings.

Guess what?

AI can generate these items for you in the form of a checklist.

How convenient is that?

At times, you can cheat your way into getting actionable insights without even having to read the book itself!

Notion provides me with limitless versatility

Over the last year, my preferred mode of content consumption changed significantly towards audiobooks, podcasts, blogs, and educational YouTube channels.

Again, Notion provides me with this versatility- I can store media of different types on a single page!

My Notion AI-powered library (now a knowledge repository) has helped me store information and guide me to some amazing channels, again powered by the context-based generation.

I can also use tools like Glasp- which help me generate transcripts of YouTube videos, then summarize them with Notion AI. Then this summary helps me decide whether I want to watch the full video. Or it converts into a personal note/ summary!

When used properly, AI can be a boon. It can streamline workflows and make your life efficient!

It’s already helping me retain knowledge better- and I will be sharing even more of my practical use cases- so drop me a follow!

I also build templates for startups and C-suite executives here.

Interested in this system?

You can find it here!