You know that document you keep meaning to read but never quite do? The one you open, see how long it is, and quietly close again? That’s me almost every other week — stack after stack to get through before a meeting or an appointment, and sometimes I’ve been sitting on it for days. And if we’re honest, a quiet guilt builds up in there too. That gap between what we meant to do and what we actually did — between who we are and who we expect ourselves to be.

One morning I finally sat down with one of those piles and felt the familiar sink: an hour of skimming ahead of me, and the nagging worry that I’d still miss the one line that mattered.

So instead of forcing my way through it, I tried something different. I dropped the whole pile into a free Google tool, asked it one question, and had a clean answer in under a minute — every point backed by the exact quote it came from, so I could check it myself. Honestly, I felt a little silly for every time I’d done it the hard way.

The tool is NotebookLM. It’s free, it’s this week’s pick, and if your work buries you in reading, it’s the one to start with.

Hello, Wen Ji here. Every Tuesday I send you one AI tool I’ve actually used that week — what it does, why it’s worth your time, and how to try it in five minutes. No theory, no jargon, no “the future of AI” think-pieces. I’m just a Financial Consultant who’s passionate about using AI, and got tired of watching everyone talk about AI while almost nobody showed you what to do with it. So I’m learning it in public, and you get the useful bits.

Here’s what makes it different from a normal chatbot. You give NotebookLM your own documents — reports, contracts, PDFs, even pasted notes — and it only knows what you gave it. It doesn’t wander off and invent things, because it’s not allowed to read anything else. Ask a question and it answers from your sources, and shows you the quote it used. You get the speed of AI without the part where you can’t trust the answer.

Try it now. You need a Google account and one document you’ve been avoiding. That’s the whole setup.

Upload your document, then paste in this exact question:

“What are the 3 things I need to know here, and where does this contradict itself?”

That’s the question that saved me the hour. Watch what it does with your own material.

One more thing once you’re in: hit Audio Overview. It turns your documents into a two-person podcast you can listen to on the drive or the walk. Sounds like a gimmick for about ten seconds. Then you realise you’ve absorbed a 40-page report standing in a queue.

That’s this week. One tool, actually used.

And that pile you’ve been avoiding? It stops being something you feel guilty about and turns into five minutes. The gap between who we are and who we expect ourselves to be doesn’t close by trying harder — it closes when the hard things stop being so hard. That’s the whole reason for this newsletter: one small thing every Tuesday that leaves you a little more capable than the Tuesday before.

So go on, open the document you’ve been putting off. You know the one.

If it helped, forward it to one person who’d get something out of it. That’s honestly how this grows. And if you’ve got an AI tool you swear by, hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

See you next Tuesday.

Wen Ji

P.S. I show these on camera too — Instagram and TikTok @tuesdayaitools.