Use all of your senses

When Holmes famously quips that the solution of a case is "elementary," he's not simply dismissing the detective work as easy. Rather, he's talking about elements, the essentials of a situation.

"Whatever the specific issue, you must define and formulate it in your mind as specifi...

Holmes talks to Watson about everything.

The telling helps, Holmes says. "Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person."

When Holmes is dealing with a particularly thorny case, he occupies himself with another activity, like playing the violin or smoking a pipe.

Konnikova contends that pipe smoking is a way for Holmes to constructively distract himself from his thinking. 

When Holmes meets a would-be source of information, he profiles him or her, looking for any advantage that might be communicated by their appearance.

He tells Watson how he nabbed details from a gambling type from intentionally losing a bet to him.

Konnikova's take: "Holmes ... focuses all of his faculties on the subject of observation ... He listens, as is his habit, 'with closed eyes and fingertips together.' ... He will not be distracted by any other task. As passive observers, we are not doing anything else; we...

If you're out there detecting all the time, you need to give yourself breaks.

Watson, who writes of his friend: "I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidenc...

Here's what he said when Watson begged him to eat:

"The faculties become refined when you starve them ... surely, my dear Watson, you must admit that what your digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain. I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere a...