- Understanding Sherlock
- Do You Have the Personality?
- Developing an Agile Mind
- Being Alert to the World Around You
- Keeping an Ear to the Ground
- Ask questions That way, you encourage the other person to speak and yourself to listen.
Don’t interrupt Avoid the temptation to interrupt, even if it is to agree with the other person.
Listening and speaking at the same time is a very difficult skill to master. Focus on the
speaker It sounds so obvious but think how often you have been introduced to someone only
to forget their name a moment later. Cut out distractions If you want to really listen to
someone, try to engage in conversation in a place where there isn’t a television showing the
football over their shoulder, or where the latest object of your affections isn’t visible.
Keeping eye contact with the speaker is a good way of maintaining your listening. Repeat it
Strange as it sounds, repeating something of particular interest that has been said can help
lodge it in your mind. You can repeat it quietly to yourself so as not to unnerve the speaker
by seeming to mimic what they are saying.
- Reading Between the Lines
- Read in an atmosphere conducive to concentration Go somewhere quiet. Turn off the
television, the radio, your telephone … anything that might distract you. Learn to chunk!
When we learn to read, we do so in a word-by-word form. However, we are capable of
reading blocks of words. Indeed, it has been argued that reading in blocks makes meaning
clearer than focussing on each individual word. When an adult reads, their eyes tend to take
in more than one word at a time, often scanning ahead of where they think they are in the
text. Try it as you read now! Relax Typically, your gaze as you read will encompass about four
or five words. Now hold this text further away from you and relax your gaze. You may well
find you absorb still more words into each block. Your peripheral vision might even take in
the end of a line while you are reading in the middle of it. With practise, you should be able
to read in chunks of text, significantly cutting down the time required to scan a page. Learn
to focus on key words Take the following line: ‘This book contains lots of information about
the famous detective Sherlock Holmes.’ What are the most important words? Well ‘book’
tells us what we are talking about, while ‘information’ gives us a pretty good idea of the type
of contents and ‘Sherlock Holmes’ gives us the specific subject. The other words, while all
helpful in their ways, might justifiably be scanned over by a speed reader. Stop sub-vocalizing
Many of us do something called ‘sub-vocalization’. This means that a little voice in our heads
says each word as we read it. A proficient reader really doesn’t need to do this. Your brain
understands a word quicker than you can say it. Here is an interesting experiment to show
you why we needn’t get caught in the minutiae of words as we read. Consider the following
passage of apparent gobbledygook:
I’ts qtuie psolbiese to mkae ssnee of tihs scenetne eevn thguoh olny the fsrit and lsat ltreets
of ecah wrod are werhe tehy slhuod be. Some people are able to discern its meaning almost
instantly, while to others it will seem like nothing more than gibberish. So how do some
people manage to understand it? Many of us do not read every letter of a word as we scan
text. In fact, often we only need the first and last letters of a word. Our brains then do their
magic and, by feeding off a mixture of accumulated experience and immediate context, are
able to predict what each word is likely to be. (For the record, the passage reads: ‘It’s quite
possible to make sense of this sentence even though only the first and last letters of each
word are where they should be.’) Sub-vocalization is a bad habit and, like most bad habits,
with a bit of willpower, you should be able to stop it.
Stop regressing Another bad habit is ‘regression’. No, not going back into your subconscious
and discovering you were Cleopatra’s favourite eunuch in a past life. When reading,
regression is going back over text to check you read it right. Rather than consolidating
understanding, this tends to break the flow of concentration and decreases your overall
comprehension. Only go back if you really need to. Use headings Consider whether your text
has any tools to help you speed up your reading. Are there lots of headings summarising
contents, or bullet points for you to scan? Use a finger Don’t feel you’re too grown up to use
a finger to trace your reading. It will help keep your eye focussed on precisely where you are
in the text, increasing your pace. Choose carefully Accept that some documentation does not
lend itself to speed reading. If you’re signing off on a mortgage, for instance, don’t be
tempted to take a shortcut on the small print. Similarly, a piece of delicately crafted verse by
your one true love should not be read like a set of revision notes.
- Keeping an Open Mind
- Thinking Laterally
- Choosing Your Friends Wisely
- Accepting Good Fortune
- Learning From Your Mistakes
- Keeping Focus
- Logic and Deduction:
Accumulate evidence. By using his finely-honed powers of observation, Holmes was able to
gather vast amounts of information from even the most unpromising of sources. Ask the
right questions. Holmes formulated clear questions in his head that he wished to answer. For
instance, what does this person’s clothing tell me about where they come from or what sort
of job they have? What does a dog’s silence signify? Why might a red-headed pawnbroker be
required to copy out an encyclopaedia for several hours a day? Formulate hypotheses.
Consider an otherwise well-dressed doctor who arrives at Baker Street carrying a rugged
walking cane and wearing shoes covered in compacted mud of a colour not usual in the
capital. Why might this be? Does he not look after his shoes properly? Are London’s
shoeshine boys on strike? Has he come in a hurry from an appointment in the country?
Evaluate hypotheses. The doctor is smartly dressed so it is unlikely that he simply doesn’t pay
attention to his shoes. You went out for a walk earlier and saw a shoeshine boy so you know
they are not on strike. The doctor does seem flustered, however, as if he has rushed to Baker
Street. Reach a conclusion. Ask the doctor what has caused him to hurry away from his rural
practice.
- Improving Your Deductive Skills
- Knowing Your Subject
Sherlock Holmes – his limits
1. Knowledge of Literature. – Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy. – Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy. – Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics. – Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany. – Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally.
Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology. – Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each
other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and
consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry. – Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy. – Accurate, but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature. – Immense. He appears to know every detail of every
horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
- Obtaining Data
Approach a crime scene with caution. Be aware of potential dangers – such as the on-going presence
of a criminal or dangerous substances. If there are any victims at the scene, they are the priority and
you should seek out assistance for them in the first instance. Secure the scene at the earliest
opportunity (with rope or tape) to avoid contamination of evidence. This may offer the best hope of
retrieving key evidence. After an initial survey, log all potentially useful information. If there are any
witnesses, be sure to get their statements. Take a note of all comings and goings at the scene.
Document the position of potential pieces of evidence. If a camera is not to hand, make drawings or
keep notes. Bring in the relevant experts for jobs such as fingerprint sweeping or bloodstain analysis.
Any evidence to be taken away should be handled as delicately as possibly (hands should be gloved
at all times). Each item of evidence must be individually bagged and labelled. An official record of the
crime scene investigation should be written up as quickly as possible and handed over (with a
briefing where necessary) to the investigating officer in charge.
- Reading the Signs
- Context
- Culture
- Clusters
- Laying Your Cards on the Table
Watch the face This is where a trained eye can spot ‘micro gestures’ that are hard to control.
If the eyes smile, they probably have a good hand. Many pros wear hats and glasses to hide
these micro signals. Check out how a player stacks their chips As a very broad rule, a player
who keeps an untidy stack is likely to play a loose game. A neat stack suggests a more
conservative player. Surreptitious glancing at their chips suggests an opponent is preparing
an attack. Posture Leaning back into a chair in a relaxed but upright manner can indicate
relief or confidence. Conversely, hunching forward can indicate nervousness. Some card
players claim that a rapidly jiggling knee beneath the table is the surest sign that someone
thinks they have a winning hand. Beware! It is an integral part of the game that many players
will consciously reverse their natural body language to confuse you. They will try to ‘play it
cool’ if they have a good hand or appear super confident if they want to bluff with a weak
hand. The trick is to work out exactly who is bluffing who.
- Mastering Disguise:
Get the look. When Holmes took on a disguise, he was preparing to enter the battlefield. To
be discovered was to be at serious personal risk. As such, ‘fancy dress’ was never on the
agenda and nor should it be for you. In particular, a badly chosen fright wig or an
overambitious set of false teeth are sure to lead to your unmasking. Less can often be more,
so avoid overplaying your hand. Avoid passing yourself off as somebody much older or
younger than you actually are, or of a vastly different body shape or even gender. Work on
expressions Holmes used artificial aids such as make-up to adapt his look (on one occasion
he even rubbed his eyes with nightshade to make himself appear seriously ill) but equally
important was his ability to adopt seemingly authentic expressions. Thus, in ‘The Empty
House’, we have a bookseller sporting a ‘snarl of contempt’ so effective that Watson entirely
fails to recognise his old friend. Similarly, in ‘The Final Problem’ he convincingly adopts a
protruding lower lip and a habit of mumbling. Here Holmes’s grasp of body language proved
a useful skill. Know your accents Having the ability to take on a new voice is a brilliant way to
mislead. Holmes was presumably masterful in Norwegian and in ‘His Last Bow’ passed
himself off as a convincing Irish-American. Have a back story Know your alter ego inside out
so that if you are challenged, you may maintain it effortlessly. It is difficult to imagine that
Holmes could have so effectively masqueraded as Sigerson unless he had a deep knowledge
of the Norwegian’s life story. Commit to the part At times you may be forced to go the extra
mile to maintain a deception. One of Sherlock’s favourite techniques was to stoop in order to
appear older. ‘It is no joke when a tall man has to take a foot off his stature for several hours
on end,’ he was forced to complain. Even more startlingly, in ‘The Adventure of Charles
Augustus Milverton’, Holmes found himself engaged to a housemaid called Agatha, all in the
cause of maintaining the illusion of his disguise.
- Breaking the Code
- Here are a few of history’s more famous codes and ciphers:
The Caesar cipher (also known as the Caesar shift) This was supposedly devised by Julius
Caesar for use by his troops. It involves shifting letters along the alphabet by a set number of
positions. If you move the alphabet by one position, for instance, a is signified by b and b is
signified by c. So the word cat would be communicated as dbu. Shift two positions and a is
signified by c and b is signified by d (with cat becoming ecv). There are a potential twenty-
five Caesar shift alphabets.
The transposition code In its simplest form, this involves writing your message into a grid of
suitable size, which is then read from a predetermined start point and in a particular
direction.
Pig Latin This technique was probably developed in the early Victorian era. Its basic rules are
simple. If a word starts with a consonant (or consonant cluster), move that to the end of the
word and add the letters ‘ay’ after it. If a word begins with a vowel (or a silent consonant),
add ‘way’ to the end. Try deciphering this: ewarebay ethay angryway anmay inway ethay
oldway athay. The message reads: ‘Beware the angry man in the old hat.’
The pigpen cipher A centuries-old cipher that uses four simple grids containing all the letters
of the alphabet: When writing their message, the sender replaces each letter with the
relevant fragment of grid.
Jargon code Here a seemingly arbitrary phrase is used in place of a known word or phrase.
So, for instance, ‘The spider has spun his web from the queen to the Eiffel Tower’ might
easily be read by a recipient in the know as ‘Professor Moriarty (the spider) has taken a train
(has spun his web) from Victoria station (the queen) to Paris (the Eiffel Tower)’.
Morse Code A remarkable code that may be rendered by long and short bursts of sound,
flashes of lights, or written dots and dashes. Devised by Samuel Morse in the 1830s, it is still
widely used today.
- Information Sifting:
Have control over your data That is to say, you must master it, rather than it you. Gather
together all the information you have in as logical a system as you can. Wading through huge
piles of information fragments is not conducive to effective sifting. Keep an eye on the bigger
picture Always keep in mind the big puzzle that you are trying to solve when considering if
you have a small piece of it in your hand. Give yourself time and space to evaluate the
information Spending hours on end staring at data is not the best way to analyse it. Indeed,
you might be one of those people whose optimum thinking is done in the shower or while
going for a run. Don’t be over-reliant on intuition It is useful to have a gut-instinct about
whether to trust one piece of information more than another. But beware of dismissing
information on a whim. And always ask the question: do I have all the pertinent information?
Beware the ‘recency’ effect We have a tendency to prioritise the information that we have
most recently acquired. Recency and relevance are not inherently linked. Retain the chaff
Until you have successfully worked through your ‘wheat’ and solved your conundrum, you
may need to revisit the ‘chaff’ to see if there is anything you have missed.
If your initial note-taking process leaves you with rather scruffy notes, re-inscribe them
neatly at the earliest opportunity. The longer you leave it, the more notes you are likely to
accumulate, and the thought of writing them up neatly will become less appealing. Use
devices to make your notes as easy to review as possible. Most simply, use headings and
subheadings. This will add structure to what you write and how you think. Consider more
complex devices too. Will a graph or a diagram make a point most clearly? Colour-coding is
another way to make notes visually stimulating. You might write up a main point in blue ink,
illustrate with an example in green ink and add some concluding thoughts in red. One
popular way to visually present interconnected ideas or subject matter is the spidergram,
also known as the mind map. Spidergrams are a great and simple way to concentrate a lot of
ideas in a small space, making review easy and often prompting new trains of thoughts by
giving you an overview of the big picture. Here’s how you might create one: At the centre of
a blank piece of paper, write your key word or phrase. Draw lines from this central concept.
Each new branch (or spider’s leg) connects to a related idea or thought. Impose some order.
Don’t let the spidergram get out of control. If there is a clear hierarchy of ideas, number the
sections or use a radial hierarchy. Let your creativity run free. Feel free to use a mixture of
upper and lower case printing, different colours, symbols or images. You set the rules.
- Improving Your Memory:
Sensory memory This relates to a timescale lasting well under a second from the moment of
perception. For instance, you might look at a stream of cars coming down the motorway and
process the colour of each car you see but would be unable to recall this data within a few
hundred milliseconds of observing it. Short-termmemory This relates to recall lasting from a
few seconds to a minute. On average, a healthy adult can store between four and seven
items in this way. Short-term memory allows you to memorise a chunk of a telephone
number for quick retrieval a few moments later. Long-termmemory This type allows us to
store huge swathes of information, sometimes created in the earliest years of our life and
kept with us to the grave. So while we might use our short-term memory to store a phone
number for the local pizza delivery company just until we can get to the phone, our long-
term memory allows us to retain the phone number from our childhood home for decades.
There are two main ways to improve memory: through external aids such as an
appointments diary or through internal aids, such as certain mental techniques. External aids
are fine for filling certain gaps but there are disadvantages to becoming over-reliant upon
them. While there is no problem in using an alarm clock day in and day out to remind us to
get up, we might not want to rely on writing too many reminder notes to ourselves simply
because it becomes inconvenient. Many studies also suggest that an over-reliance on
external aids can make our memories lazier and less able to function without them.
Make it personal Relate new information to things that are particular to you. This might be
anything from people that you know or your favourite sports team to more complex
associations incorporating your personal beliefs. You’ve met a girl whose favourite perfume
is Chanel No.5 and you want to remember it so you can buy her a bottle for Christmas. Is the
number five your lucky number? Was it your shirt number in the school sports team? Your
house number? Make a link. Use imagery Need a way to remember someone’s name? Just
been introduced to Mr Glass? Then imagine Mr Glass as being see-through. Next time the
two of you meet, it will be the first thing that pops into your head and you’ll have no
problem recalling his name. Alas, not everyone will have such an imagery-friendly name, but
the only limit to this system is your own imagination. Say it proud Not always a convenient
technique, but repeating aloud a vital bit of information gives you more chance of
remembering it. Remember just as you are about to forget This was the conclusion of a
nineteenth century German psychologist called Hermann Ebbinghaus. Having spent many
years testing his recall of lengthy strings of random nonsense, he discerned that the most
efficient memorisation goes on during the earliest attempts. Although less new information
is retained in each subsequent review, the memory is reinforced so reviews need only occur
at ever more distant moments in time. Thus, you should review new information initially
after just a few seconds, then after a few minutes, then after an hour and so on. Eventually,
you might only need to re-remember a memory every few years for it to remain intact.
Chunking A useful method for items like strings of numbers, addresses, etc. Imagine you
need to remember a twelve-digit bank card number: 196674722199. It will be a lot easier to
fix it in your memory if you divide it up into sections: 1966 7472 2199. And if you can attach
some meaning to each chunk, it becomes easier still. For instance, you might wish to
remember it in these chunks: 1966 (the year England won the World Cup) 747 (a jumbo jet)
221 (Sherlock’s number on Baker Street) 99 (red balloons). Mnemonics This is a nice verbal
trick to lodge a clump of information in your mind. Many of the most effective mnemonics
are nothing more than simple acronyms. Thus, the eminently memorable line ‘Richard of
York gave battle in vain’ reminds us of the colours of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo, violet) while ‘Naughty elephants squirting water’ reminds us of the order of the
compass points (north, east, south, west). Implementation intentions If you need to
remember to do something on a regular basis, then this might work for you. It is a system of
self-regulation so that you might tell yourself, ‘Imust take my pills with my cup of tea just
before bedtime’. Brain-training games Sudoku and crosswords are considered an excellent
way to preserve memory faculty and can help fend off conditions such as Alzheimer’s
Disease. Put your memories in their place This is a technique employed by some of the
world’s leading exponents of memory feats.
- Taking a Walk Down Memory Lane
- Reaching Conclusions:
Be in the right frame of mind Seeking the truth is an exercise best done when rested and
relaxed. Fuel yourself too. A team of researchers in 2010 found that making judgements is
best achieved when your blood sugar levels are at their optimum level. Gather your raw
information As we have seen, Holmes gathered data from a huge range of sources – the
crime scene, eye-witnesses, personal experience, reference materials etc. Evaluate the data
Set aside that which seems flawed or not useful. Be a reader of human nature In The Sign of
Four, Holmes quoted the historian and philosopher, Winwood Reade, on the subject: He
remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a
mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but
you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but
percentages remain constant. So says the statistician. Search for the anomaly The out-of-
place detail can be the thread that unravels an enigma. As Holmes said, ‘what is out of the
common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.’ Think the unthinkable As Holmes
proclaimed in The Valley of Fear, ‘how often is imagination the mother of truth?’ Formulate
your hypotheses Evaluate the likelihood of each hypothesis against the known facts. When
Holmes was accused of straying into guesswork in The Hound of the Baskervilles, he
responded: ‘Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most
likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on
which to start our speculation.’ Don’t mistake correlation for causation As an example, we
live in an age when the ice caps are melting and obesity is increasing, but that does not
mean one causes the other or that they are linked in any way beyond coincidence. Be
rigorous Do not become fixated on a single particular theory. Entertain all the possibilities.
Exclude the impossible … Perhaps Holmes’s guiding maxim – a hypothesis that does not fit
the facts must be dismissed. Eventually you will be left with the only theory which complies
with all the facts. No matter how unlikely it seems, this must be the truth.
