How to Think Like Sherlock (7 page)

One of the mottoes that Diego Rodriguez and I use at the Stanford d.school (Institute of Design) is ‘failure sucks, but instructs’. We encourage students to learn from the constant stream of small setbacks and successes that are produced by doing things (rather than just talking about what to do). To paraphrase our d.school founder and inspiration David Kelley: ‘If you keep making the same mistakes again and again, you aren’t learning anything. If you keep making new and different mistakes, that means you are doing new things and learning new things.’

Keeping Focus

‘My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.’

‘THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE’

As your old school teachers wearied of drumming into you as a child, the best way to avoid making mistakes is to maintain concentration. As Watson recorded in ‘The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist’, Holmes ‘loved above all things precision and concentration of thought’.

For most of us, our minds are in a state of flux. We keep a lot of stuff in our heads and too easily we can fall into the trap of turning it over to no real advantage. Without a bit of focus we might find ourselves utterly submerged beneath the chaos going on in our skulls.

Yet somehow most of us maintain a degree of control over our thought processes by concentrating on whatever needs to be concentrated on at any given moment. Quite how we do this as effectively as we do is something of a mystery which some of the greatest minds alive today are attempting to solve. What they broadly agree on is that, as a species, we have a remarkable propensity for ‘attentional control’. Here are a few suggestions as to how to improve your concentration:

As with keeping your brain agile, your ability to concentrate is directly related to how rested, relaxed and well-fuelled you are. If you know that you need your concentration levels to be at their best, make sure you are eating and drinking well, getting a good night’s sleep and are incorporating some relaxation time into your schedule.

If you need a burst of concentration, a shot of caffeine might do the trick, though research suggests the more regularly you drink it, the less effective it becomes.

Keep things fresh. It is easy to slip into dull routine but boredom is a sure-fire way to lose focus. It is far more likely you will slip up at work if you’re doing the same process for the thousandth time while you stare out of the window, wishing you were somewhere more exciting. If you feel yourself drifting off, take a moment to do or plan something that actually interests you – afterwards, you will likely find yourself better able to focus on the immediate job in hand.

Don’t multitask excessively. It is said by some that this is never a problem for the male of the species as he has an innate inability to multitask. But no-one is really at their best if they are doing seventy-three different things at once. If you really need to focus on an activity, give it your undivided attention.

Put yourself in a place where there aren’t a multitude of distractions.

Train yourself to consciously concentrate when you need to. Tell yourself ‘I need to concentrate now’ (or something similar) if it helps you to focus.

Work out when your best concentrating time is. Some of us are early birds, others are night owls and still others find they’re most productive just after lunch. Work out when your optimum hours are and schedule in tasks that require the highest levels of concentration in these periods.

Another useful tactic is to do activities and play games that promote concentration. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Say the alphabet backwards. When you’ve done it once, do it again but quicker.

Recall all the countries you have ever visited.

List the birthdays of everyone in your family.

Remember everybody from your class at school.

Do your times tables. Not just the easy ones, but the ones that always trip you up.

Choose a subject of particular interest to you and test yourself on it. For instance, if you’re obsessed with The Beatles, try to name all of their number one hits. Or if you’re fanatical about football, name the champions for each season as far back as you can remember.

Logic and Deduction

‘I never guess. It is a shocking habit – destructive to the logical faculty.’

‘THE SIGN OF FOUR’

Holmes’s remarkable faculties are shown at their best time and again when he is making deductions from evidence that seems to the rest of us to yield little of value. Indeed, so accurate are the conclusions he draws that at times it seems almost as if he has mystical powers or psychic abilities. But what is the process of logical 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.

On the occasion of Watson’s very first meeting with Holmes in
A Study in Scarlet
, the Great Detective gives a master class in logical deduction. Watson had arrived in London looking for lodgings and Holmes was searching for someone with whom to share rooms, so the two men were introduced by a mutual friend named Stamford:

‘Dr. Watson, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,’ said Stamford, introducing us.

‘How are you?’ he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit.

‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.’

‘How on earth did you know that?’ I asked in astonishment.

‘Never mind,’ said he, chuckling to himself. ‘The question now is about haemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?’

And so the story progresses. The two men agree to take rooms together and Holmes eventually divulges to his new companion just how he achieved such a remarkable insight: