Why mindfulness is so important to us

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.

The “brain attic” is Holmes’s analogy for the human mind and how we store information.  Just consuming information leads to mental clutter that gets difficult to access when you need it.

We are more likely to remember something if we connect it to a sensory experience or previous action, like writing or connecting memories to smells or sounds.

Holmes plays the violin, because it takes him out of his thinking mind and places him in a purely physical state.

“Taking mental holidays can be incredibly productive for creativity", even something as simple as taking a walk in the park during your lunch break instead of eating at your desk.

Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot encourages everybody to tell their story.  Stories help Poirot comprehend what kind of person the victim was. And to uncover the murderer’ motive.

Storytelling is powerful to uncover insights, not just the truth. Design Thinking — a process for creative problem solving — leverages the power of stories to detect human desires and needs.

Sarah Linden is the least self-aware television detective.

Her dedication to her work and stubbornness are unbeatable. She never gives up. Even though she fails in many aspects of her life — like being a mother. But, she keeps showing up and trying to do better. She tries again, fails again, and fails better.

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 specifically as possible — and then you must fill it in with past experience and present observation," -- Konnikova writes

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.

Learn how to notice small details.

It's not a superhuman ability. It's important to note when talking about Holmes that he has spent a lifetime cultivating the habits of mindfulness. So it's not like he was just born with this ability to be in touch with the world. What we choose to notice or not notice is a way of framing it in our own mind. We have a lot of bad habits in our mind, and we have to retrain ourselves to really notice the world. Everything we do rewires the brain, but we can rewire it in a way that mindfulness eventually becomes less of an effort. -- Konnikova

Give yourself monthly or daily challenges to form a new habit of observation.

Ideas could include trying new foods weekly and writing about them, noticing the color of a co-worker's shirt every day, or even just looking at a new piece of art closely once a day.

The idea is to gradually teach yourself to notice small details in your environment and daily life. 

To treat someone who seemingly has depression, while isolating this from any other situation, event or circumstance that might have triggered it is a flawed way to diagnose a potential mental illness.

The root cause of the problem of depression is not addressed in this way.

Antidepressant prescription and eventually their doses have doubled over the past decade, yet depression and anxiety are spiraling out of control.

The real cause of depression does not seem to be completely inside our heads, and pill-popping is just a stop-gap measure, which may even be harmful.

It’s impossible to think about risk and opportunity without a reference point. And ours is at most incomplete (if not totally wrong).

Everything we think about risk and opportunity is shaped by our own specific situation and personal experience. So everybody has a view of risk shaped by narrow experiences but applied to the broad world.

Long-term thinking is difficult to put in action because the long run is a collection of short runs that have to be handled, displayed, and used as information to gauge whether a long-term reward still exists.

Short-term thinking can be the only way you’ll survive long enough to experience long-term results.

Your first impressions are usually pretty accurate. But whether they are wrong or right, first impressions affect us in a big way and we are slow to change them.

You have to be willing to update them quite rapidly. 

• Studies show that if someone seems extroverted, confident, religious or conscientious, they probably are.
• We all pay more attention to pretty people, and so we tend to take the time to evaluate them.
• If you want to know if someone is good at their job, watch them do it for 30-60 seconds. 
• Funny people are smart: Effective humor production acts as an honest indicator of intelligence in humans.

Outliers are extreme examples of people who are on the outer edge of success or have a radically different life, glorified by the media.

Following Outliers leads normal people to make decisions based on false hope and highly unlikely possibilities.

We need safe, nurturing environments to be our best, to blossom into what we truly are destined for, no matter how big or small, in our unique way.

We are provided with unnecessary pain and suffering by the constant comparison with people who are born radically different from us and are having different circumstances. 

• It’s important to share your real struggles, support and fundings once you find success, or it gives a distorted and false impression to those struggling without any resources. There shouldn’t be a stigma attached to getting help from parents and spouses.
• It’s imperative to have transparency about money and understand that in any structure of privilege, the people at the top have to take into account what it means to people below them, who are struggling with meagre resources or a network of supporters.