How to Organize 50+ NotebookLM Notebooks Without Losing Your Mind

The notebook graveyard problem

You open NotebookLM. There are 67 notebooks. Half have names like “Untitled notebook” or “Research - March”. You can’t remember what’s in most of them. You can’t search across them. You scroll, give up, and create notebook #68.

This is the natural end state of heavy NotebookLM use. Here’s a system to fix it.

The naming convention that actually works

Bad: Research March 2026 Bad: Climate paper Good: [TYPE] Topic — Subtopic

Examples:

• [BOOK] The Innovator's Dilemma — Clayton Christensen
• [PROJECT] Product launch — Q2 2026
• [COURSE] Stanford ML — Week 3-6 notes
• [CLIENT] Acme Corp — due diligence

The type prefix lets you visually scan at a glance. The dashes separate what from when.

Rule: name it when you create it, not when you remember to.

The three-tier tag system

Use tags to describe state, not just topic:

Tier 1 — Status tags (always apply one)

• #active — currently working in this notebook
• #reference — done, but keep for lookup
• #archive — done, can be cleaned up eventually

Tier 2 — Type tags

• #research, #client, #personal, #course

Tier 3 — Priority tags (optional)

• #urgent, #review, #shared

A notebook about a client project you’re actively working on: #active #client #urgent

The weekly 10-minute cleanup

Every week, spend 10 minutes:

1. Move any #active notebook you haven’t touched in 2 weeks → #reference
2. Move any #reference notebook older than 3 months → #archive
3. Export and delete any #archive notebooks you’ll never need inside NotebookLM again

This keeps your workspace under 30 active notebooks.

The Kortex automation that does this for you

With Kortex’s Smart Sort automation, you can define rules like:

• “Any notebook tagged #archive → move to Archive collection”
• “Any notebook not touched in 30 days → auto-tag #review”
• “Any notebook tagged #client → move to Client Work collection”

The Cleaner automation can also flag notebooks for deletion when they haven’t been touched in a defined period — you review and confirm, it doesn’t delete automatically.

Collections in Kortex work like folders. You can have: Active Projects, Reference Library, Client Work, Courses, Archive. Each notebook belongs to one collection.

Not using Kortex yet? The getting started guide covers setup, export, and the full organization layer in one place.

Try Kortex free →