And it is to that task of mindful observation that we now turn. Earlier in the week we had finished The Count of Monte Cristo—after a harrowing journey that took several months to complete—and the bar was set high indeed. How in the world did he know that? The matter, it was clear to me, went beyond simple observation of detail. Or did it? When Watson wonders how Holmes could have possibly known about his wartime service, he posits that someone told the detective beforehand.
It is entirely possible. He continues: I knew you came from Afghanistan. There were such steps, however. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly.
His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.
Sure enough, the starting point seems to be observation, plain and simple. Holmes looks at Watson and gleans at once details of his physical appearance, his demeanor, his manner. And out of those he forms a picture of the man as a whole—just as the real-life Joseph Bell had done in the presence of the astonished Arthur Conan Doyle.
Observation with a capital O—the way Holmes uses the word when he gives his new companion a brief history of his life with a single glance —does entail more than, well, observation the lowercase kind.
What details do you omit? And how do you take in and capture those details that you do choose to zoom in on? So we have to choose wisely. Choosing wisely means being selective. It means not only looking but looking properly, looking with real thought. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged.
That came from sheer practice, over many days and years. Bell had seen so many patients, heard so many life stories, made so many diagnoses that at some point, it all became natural—just as it did for Holmes.
A young, inexperienced Bell would have hardly been capable of the same perspicacity. After that aqueous start, Holmes proceeds to expand the principle to human interaction.
Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems. Let him, on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance to distinguish the history of the man, and the trade or profession to which he belongs.
That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable. His face, however, is haggard. Clearly then, not a vacation, but something that made him unwell. An unnatural stiffness in one arm, such a stiffness as could result from an injury. Each observation is taken in context and in tandem with the others—not just as a stand-alone piece but as something that contributes to an integral whole.
As he looks, he asks the right questions about those observations, the questions that will allow him to put it all together, to deduce that ocean from the water drop. As for profession: the category doctor p r e c e d e s military doctor—category before subcategory, never the other way around. Each observation must be integrated into an existing knowledge base.
In fact, were Holmes to meet himself, he would categori cal l y not guess his own profession. Base rates—or the frequency of something in a general population— matter when it comes to asking the right questions. For now, we have Watson, the doctor from Afghanistan. But how do we learn to get to that conclusion on our own? First, we know he pays little attention to the hospital—where he is heading to meet Holmes for the first time —as he enters it.
It seems that Watson has jumped the gun by assuming him to be somehow akin to a medical student, and thus someone who is not associated with great physical feats. Why the lack of awareness, the superficial and highly subjective assessment? In four words, the essence of the entire problem. As it happens, Watson is far from alone. That fault bedevils most of us—at least when it comes to paying attention. In , Hans Ladenspelder, a copperplate engraver, finished work on an engraving that was meant to be part of a series of seven: a female, reclining on one elbow on a pillar, her eyes closed, her head resting on her left hand.
Peeking out over her right shoulder, a donkey. Acedia means, literally, not caring. Whether you think of it as a sin, a temptation, a lazy habit of mind, or a medical condition, the phenomenon begs the same question: why is it so damn hard to pay attention? Wandering is their default. That is their resting state.
Anything more requires an act of conscious will. The modern emphasis on multitasking plays into our natural tendencies quite well, often in frustrating ways. Every new input, every new demand that we place on our attention is like a possible predator: Oooh, says the brain. Maybe I should pay attention to that instead. And then along comes something else. We can feed our mind wandering ad infinitum.
The result? We pay attention to everything and nothing as a matter of course. We were supposed to remain ever ready to engage, but not to engage with multiple things at once, or even in rapid succession. Notice once more how Watson pays attention—or not, as the case may be— when he first meets Holmes.
Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. Attention is a limited resource. Letting your eyes get too taken in by all of the scientific equipment in the laboratory prevents you from noticing anything of significance about the man in that same room.
We cannot allocate our attention to multiple things at once and expect it to function at the same level as it would were we to focus on just one activity. Two tasks cannot possibly be in the attentional foreground at the same time. One will inevitably end up being the focus, and the other—or others—more akin to irrelevant noise, something to be filtered out. Or worse still, none will have the focus and all will be, albeit slightly clearer, noise, but degrees of noise all the same.
Think of it this way. I am going to present you with a series of sentences. You can set a timer that beeps at every five-second interval, or find one online—or try to approximate as best you can. She was worried about being too hot so she took her new shawl. She drove along the bumpy road with a view to the sea.
When we add on to our house, we will build a wooden duck. The workers knew he was not happy when they saw his smile. The place is such a maze it is hard to find the right hall. The little girl looked at her toys then played with her doll. Now please write down the final word of each sentence in order. Again, do not try to cheat by referring back to the sentences. The mandatory time limit can make it tricky, as can the need to not only read but understand each sentence so that you can verify it: instead of focusing on the last word, you have to process the meaning of the sentence as a whole as well.
However many words you can manage to recall, I can tell you several things. The concept was pioneered by Ulric Neisser, the father of cognitive psychology. Neisser noticed how he could look out a window at twilight and either see the external world or focus on the reflection of the room in the glass.
Twilight or reflection had to give. He termed the concept selective looking. If, for example, they were watching the basketball game, they would not notice if the cardplayers suddenly stopped playing cards and instead stood up to shake hands.
It was just like selective listening—a phenomenon discovered in the s, in which people listening to a conversation with one ear would miss entirely something that was said in their other ear—except, on an apparently much broader scale, since it now applied to multiple senses, not just to a single one.
It should be. We are capable of wiping out entire chunks of our visual field without knowingly doing so. Holmes admonished Watson for seeing but not observing. For instance, when we are in a foul mood, we quite literally see less than when we are happy. Our visual cortex actually takes in less information from the outside world. No exceptions. Yes, awareness may require only minimal attention, but it does require some attention.
Nothing happens quite automatically. Not only will you have missed the proverbial twilight for focusing too intently at the reflection in the window, but the harder you were thinking, the more dilated your pupils will have become. But there is one encouraging thing: the importance—and effectiveness—of training, of brute practice, is overwhelmingly clear.
What was previously taxing will have become more natural, more habitual, more effortless; in other words, easier. What used to be the purview of the Holmes system would have sneaked into the Watson system. And all it will have taken is a little bit of practice, a small dose of habit formation. Your brain can be one quick study if it wants to be. Daniel Kahneman argues repeatedly that System 1—our Watson system—is hard to train.
His solution? Make System 2—Holmes—do the work by taking System 1 forcibly out of the equation. The Holmes solution? Habit, habit, habit. That, and motivation. Become an expert of sorts at those types of decisions or observation that you want to excel at making. The important thing is the proper, selective training—the presence of mind —coupled with the desire and the motivation to master your thought process.
When it comes right down to it, there is no such thing as free attention; it all has to come from somewhere. And every time we place an additional demand on our attentional resources—be it by listening to music while walking, checking our email while working, or following five media streams at once—we limit the awareness that surrounds any one aspect and our ability to deal with it in an engaged, mindful, and productive manner.
Not only is attention limited, but it is a finite resource. We can drain it down only so much before it needs a reboot.
Psychologist Roy Baumeister uses the analogy of a muscle to talk about self- control—an analogy that is just as appropriate when it comes to attention: just as a muscle, our capacity for self- control has only so many exertions in it and will get tired with too much use. You need to replenish a muscle—actually, physically replenish it, with glucose and a rest period; Baumeister is not talking about metaphorical energy—though a psych-you-up speech never hurt—to remain in peak form.
Otherwise, performance will flag. Unless you take steroids—the exercise equivalent of a Ritalin or Adderall for superhuman attention—you will reach your limit, and even steroids take you only so far.
And failure to use it? It will shrink right back to its pre-exercise size. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are visiting New York not so far- fetched—their creator spent some memorable time in the city and decide to go to the top of the Empire State Building.
When they arrive at the observation deck, they are accosted by a quirky stranger who proposes a contest: which of them will be the first to spot an airplane in flight?
The only consideration is who sees the plane first. How do the two go about the task? It may seem like an easy thing to do: an airplane is a pretty large bird, and the Empire State Building is a pretty tall house, with a pretty commanding degree view.
What if the plane is somewhere else? There are a lot of what-ifs—if you want to emerge victorious, that is—but they can be made manageable what-ifs, if you view them as nothing more than a few strategy choices. Watson, as we know, is energetic. He is quick to act and quick to move. Better move quickly. What of Holmes? He would know when a bird was just a bird, or a passing shadow just a low-hanging cloud.
He might even smell and feel the air for changing wind or a whiff of gasoline. And I know precisely where it will appear. Who would win? Just as we remain remarkably efficient and effective for a remarkable percentage of the time despite our cognitive biases, so, too, our Watsonian attentional abilities are as they are for a reason. And Watson had a point back there: searching for that airplane? Perhaps not the best use of his time. What we need to learn instead is how to tell our brains what and how to filter, instead of letting them be lazy and decide for us, based on what they think would make for the path of least resistance.
Standing on top of the Empire State Building, watching quietly for airplanes, Sherlock Holmes has illustrated the four elements most likely to allow us to do just that: selectivity, objectivity, inclusivity, and engagement.
Be Selective Picture the following scene. A man passes by a bakery on his way to the office. He pauses. He hesitates. He looks in the window. The beautiful glaze. The warm, buttery rolls. The rosy doughnuts, kissed with a touch of sugar. He goes in. He asks for a cinnamon roll. You only live once. And besides, today is an exception.
Now rewind and replay. He smells cinnamon. The oily, sugary glaze that has likely caused more heart attacks and blocked arteries than you can count. The burned doughnuts that will sit like lumps in your stomach and make you wonder why you ever ate them to begin with. Just as I thought, he says. Nothing here for me. He walks on, hurrying to his morning meeting.
What has changed between scenario one and scenario two? Nothing visible. The sensory information has remained identical. Or, to put it differently, our brains are bombarded by something like eleven million pieces of data—that is, items in our surroundings that come at all of our senses—at once. Of that, we are able to consciously process only about forty. As one Wall Street guru cynically observed, the key to being seen as a visionary is to always make your predictions in opposing pairs.
Our minds are set the way they are for a reason. Tread carefully and use it wisely. In other words, be selective about your attention. Yes, but the crucial distinction is between quantity and quality. What we need to do is allocate our attention mindfully. And mindset is the beginning of that selectivity.
Holmes knows this better than anyone. But he is just as likely to not notice the weather outside or the fact that Watson has had time to leave the apartment and return to it. Whatever the situation, answering the question of what, specifically, you want to accomplish will put you well on your way to knowing how to maximize your limited attentional resources.
Does your brain notice the sweet smell or the grease on the napkin? But he does form a precise plan of attack: he defines his objectives and the necessary elements for achieving them. So in The Hound of the Baskervilles, when Dr. Mortimer enters the sitting room, Holmes already knows what he wants to gain from the situation. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? When the doctor does appear, Holmes sets at once to ascertain the purpose of his visit, asking about every detail of the potential case, the people involved, the circumstances.
He learns the history of the Baskerville legend, the Baskerville house, the Baskerville family. He inquires to the neighbors, the occupants of the Baskerville estate, the doctor himself, insofar as he relates to the family. He even sends for a map of the area, so that he can gather the full range of elements, even those that may have been omitted in the interview. James Mortimer asks of Sherlock Holmes. I flatter myself that I could find my way about.
What his body did, he does not know. So, noticing everything? But noticing everything that matters to the purpose at hand. And therein lies the key difference. He allocates his attention strategically. We already do this naturally in situations where our brains know, without our having to tell them, that something is important.
Well, picture yourself back in that group, chatting away. And just like yours, they are all chatting away. It becomes background noise. Your brain knows how to take the environment and tune out most of it, according to your general goals and needs specifically, dorsal and ventral regions in the parietal and frontal cortex become involved in both goal-directed—parietal—and stimulus-driven—frontal—attentional control.
And all of a sudden one conversation comes into clear focus. You can hear every word. You snap to attention. What just happened? Someone said your name, or something that sounded like your name. That was enough to signal to your brain to perk up and focus.
Here was something that had relevance to you; pay attention. You need to teach your mind to perk up, as if it were hearing your name, but absent that oh-so-clear stimulus. Discrete goal: not to eat the baked goods. Discrete elements to focus on: the sweets themselves find the negative in their appearance , the smells why not focus on the exhaust smell from the street instead of the sweet baking? But what about making a decision, solving a problem at work, or something even more amorphous?
It works the same way. Selectivity—mindful, thoughtful, smart selectivity—is the key first step to learning how to pay attention and make the most of your limited resources. Start small; start manageable; start focused. System Watson may take years to become more like System Holmes, and even then it may never get there completely, but by being mindfully focused, it can sure get closer. One caveat, however: you can set goals to help you filter the world, but be careful lest you use these goals as blinders.
If the available information changes, so should you. That, too, is part of the observational process. Let your inner Holmes show your inner Watson where to look.
By the time he makes it from the north of England to London, to consult with Mr. It must certainly be the case, Huxtable tells Holmes, that Heidegger, the German master, was somehow an accomplice to the disappearance. His bicycle is missing from the bicycle shed and his room bears signs of a hasty exit.
A kidnapper? It would be too much to chalk the double disappearance off to something as simple as coincidence. A police investigation is initiated at once, and when a young man and boy are seen together on an early train at a neighboring station, it seems that the policemen have done their duty admirably. The investigation is duly called off. And so, three days after the mysterious events, the principal has come to consult Mr.
Not a moment too soon, says the detective—and perhaps, several moments too late. Precious time has been lost. Will the fugitives be found before even greater tragedy occurs? What makes up a situation like this? It also entails understanding something very specific: a situation in its broadest sense, be it mental, physical, or something as un- situation-like as an empty room is inherently dynamic. And you, by the very action of entering into it, shift it from what it was before your arrival to something altogether different.
This may sound like common sense, but it is actually much harder to understand in practice than it seems in theory. Maybe you have an ache or a cough that you want to check out. Maybe you are simply overdue for your next physical.
You sigh, pick up the phone, and make an appointment with your doctor. The next day you make your way to his office. You sit in the waiting room. Your name is called. You go in for your appointment. You may not even feel particularly anxious or stressed.
All the same, your readings and results will have changed. The situation has shifted through mere presence and observation. Recall Dr. Nothing more, nothing less. What the principal reports to Holmes is fact or so he believes. But is it really?
We forget to separate the factual situation from our subjective interpretation of it. I probably won't be able to solve murders after having read Mastermind, but I will have much to reflect on. Uploaded by Unknown on May 5, Internet Archive's 25th Anniversary Logo. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest.
Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Mastermind how to think like sherlock holmes mastermind how to pdfhe success principles mastermind planning how to get from. Description of the book 'Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes': No fictional character is more renowned for his extraordinary powers of mind than Sherlock Holmes.
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Loved each and every part of this book.
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