Give yourself distance

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 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...

When Holmes first met Dr. Watson, his soon to be partner in solving crimes, the detective deduced his personal history from his appearance.

Holmes sees his new acquaintance's symptoms of tropics, sickness, and injury, and is able to see how they fit together and offhand claim: "You have bee...

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...

In the novel " Hound of the Baskervilles," Holmes assembles clues not just by reading everything he can find, but involving all his senses.

We shouldn't neglect our senses — since they influence our decisions in ways we don't even realize.

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...