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How to Develop Sherlock Holmes-Like Powers of Observation and Deduction
It gives you the ability to notice subtle cues during conversations, job interviews, presentations, and anywhere else so you can react to situations more tactfully.
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Key Ideas
Systematic approach
Having a systematic approach to how you deal with problems, as opposed to just going by gut and feelings, ca...
Study the problem first
Detectives and investigators use the process. They ask both obvious and unthinkable questions.
Get close and collect information about how the problem is manifesting. Understand where the problem does and doesn’t happen, when the problem started, and how often the problem occurs to generate critical insight for the problem-solving effort.
Question for great answers
- Don’t look for solutions immediately; Keep redefining the problem until you arrive at the root cause.
- Don’t try to guess the solution; try to understand how the obstacles, or challenges manifest first.
- Gather data to analyze all potential root causes.
- Consider all options, regardless of how irrelevant they currently appear.
- Find a way to connect the dots. Make better analogies. One good analogy is worth three hours of discussion.
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Key Ideas
Think like Sherlock Holmes
“What Sherlock Holmes offers isn’t just a way of solving a crime. It is an entire way of thinking."
"Holmes provides... an education in improving our faculty of mindful thought...
Engagement
As it does so, we become less and less able to know or notice our own thought habits and more and more allow our minds to dictate our judgments and decisions, instead of the other way around.
Pitfalls of the Untrained Brain
Daniel Kahneman believes there are two systems for organizing and filtering knowledge:
- System one is real-time. This system makes judgments and decisions before our mental apparatus can consciously catch up.
- System two, on the other hand, is a slow process of thinking based on critical examination of evidence. Konnikova refers to these as System Watson and System Holmes.
To move from a System Watson- to a System Holmes-governed thinking takes mindfulness plus motivation.
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Key Ideas
See and observe
It is important to both see and to observe. As Holmes tells Dr Watson: “You see, but you do not observe.”
Why mindfulness is important
- Mindfulness can lead to improvements in physiological well-being and emotional regulation.
- Mindfulness can even enhance our levels of wisdom, both in terms of dialectism (being cognizant of change and contradictions in the world) and intellectual humility (knowing your own limitations).
- Mindfulness can lead to improved problem solving, enhanced imagination, and better decision making.
Mindfulness and inattentional blindness
When we focus on one particular element in a situation or problem, our brains can cause all the other elements to ‘disappear', so that we will have no conscious experience of having ever been exposed to them.
Inattentional blindness illustrates the limitations of our attentional abilities. We can’t ever multitask the way we think we can. Something will get lost.