How to think like sherlock holmes free pdf download

And the easier it is to recall, the more confident we are in its applicability and truth. In one of the classic demonstrations of the effect, individuals who had read unfamiliar names in the context of a passage later judged those names as famous—based simply on the ease with which they could recall them—and were subsequently more confident in the accuracy of their judgments.

To them, the ease of familiarity was proof enough. Over and over, experimenters have demonstrated that when something in the environment, be it an image or a person or a word, serves as a prime, individuals are better able to access related concepts—in other words, those concepts have become more available—and they are more likely to use those concepts as confident answers, whether or not they are accurate.

Forget everything else that Watson may or may not know. Additional information is not welcome. How typical is this type of person if you consider the population at large? Not very, I venture to guess—even if we factor in the blond hair and blue eyes, which are doubtless signs of saintliness and all. One hundred? What is the total sample size? I doubt he is now remembering them; they may as well have never existed , and the most familiar ones the ones that his mind has returned to most often—again, likely not the most representative of the lot.

Chances are, from this point forward, it will take an earthquake, and perhaps even more than that, to shake Watson from his initial assessment. To see the power of the face in action, look at these pictures.

Which face is the more attractive? Which person is the more competent? They are the faces of two rival political candidates, who ran in the U.

In approximately 70 percent of cases, competence ratings given in under a second of exposure will predict the actual results of political races. From the strength of a chin and the trace of a smile, our brains decide who will serve us best. And look at the result: Warren G. Harding, the most perfect square-jawed president that ever was. His judgments from here on out will be influenced strongly by the effects of primacy—the persistent strength of first impressions.

Chance and luck? Not important. The knowledge that we are, as a general rule, extremely bad at making any sort of prediction about the future, be it for an event or a behavior? Likewise irrelevant to his judgment. And in a self- fulfilling prophecy of sorts, which could potentially have rather perverse consequences, his own behavior could prompt Mary to act in a way that seems to confirm his initial impression of her.

Act toward Mary as if she were a beautiful saint, and she will likely respond to him with a saintly smile. Let me tell you a bit about Amy. First, she is intelligent and industrious. Stop right there. No longer as good, right?

You will be more likely to discount the latter characteristics and to weigh the former more heavily—all because of your initial intuition. Reverse the two, and the opposite happens; no amount of intelligence and industriousness can save someone who you saw initially as envious and stubborn. Or consider the following two descriptions of an individual. And yet, when study participants heard one of the two descriptions and were then asked to pick which of two traits best described the person in a list of eighteen pairs from which they always had to choose one trait from each pair , the final impression that the two lists produced was markedly different.

Subjects were more likely to find person one generous—and person two the opposite. Yes, you might say, but generosity is an inherent aspect of warmth. Yet participants went a step further in their judgment: they also rated person one in consistently more positive terms than person two, on traits that had nothing whatsoever to do with warmth.

And so, our initial impressions tend to hold an outsized impact, no matter the evidence that may follow. What about Holmes? I did not observe. Does Holmes mean, literally, that he did not observe? Quite the contrary. He observed all of the same physical details as did Watson, and likely far more to boot. In that statement, Watson has gone from objective observation to subjective opinion, imbuing physical facts with emotional qualities.

That is precisely what Holmes warns against. He knows that if he focuses on a pleasant feeling, he will drop his guard. He knows that if he lets an incidental physical feature get to him, he will run the risk of losing objectivity in the rest of his observation. He knows that if he comes too quickly to a judgment, he will miss much of the evidence against it and pay more attention to the elements that are in its favor.

And he knows how strong the pull to act according to a prejudgment will be. And so he chooses to be selective with those elements that he allows inside his head to begin with. For we should never forget that any experience, any aspect of the world to which we bring our attention is a future memory ready to be made, a new piece of furniture, a new picture to be added to the file, a new element to fit in to our already crowded attics.

Holmes is not an automaton, as the hurt Watson calls him when he fails to share his enthusiasm for Mary. But only after she has bested him in a battle of wits, showing herself to be a more formidable opponent, male or female, than he has ever encountered. He simply understands that everything is part of a package and could just as well stem from character as from circumstance, irrespective of valence—and he knows that attic space is precious and that we should think carefully about what we add to the boxes that line our minds.

Or rather, step more into yourself. Realize that the judgments in your head had to come from somewhere— they always do—and take another look at the person who is making his way toward you.

Objectively, is there anything on which to base your sudden impression? Does Joe have a scowl? Did Jane just push someone out of the way? Then your dislike is coming from somewhere else. Maybe if you reflect for just a second, you will realize that it is the baseball hat or the blue streak.

Who knows, it might have been right. Now you can use the conversation to actually observe—physical details, mannerisms, words. A wealth of evidence that you will treat with the full knowledge that you have already decided, on some level and at some earlier point, to lend more weight to some signs than to others, which you will try to reweigh accordingly.

Maybe Jane is nothing like your friend. Or maybe you were right all along. Instead, by the time a judgment reaches our awareness, it has already been filtered thoroughly by the interaction of our brain attics and the environment. A Prime Environment: The Power of the Incidental In the case of Mary Morstan or Joe and Jane Stranger, elements of physical appearance activated our biases, and these elements were an intrinsic part of the situation.

Sometimes, however, our biases are activated by factors that are entirely unrelated to what we are doing—and these elements are sneaky little fellows. At every step, the environment primes us.

As they pass Aldershot, Watson glances out the window at the passing houses. But Holmes shook his head gravely. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty.

I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there. Long before Watson exclaims at the beauty of the passing houses, his mind has been primed by its environment to think in a certain way and to notice certain things. Is it all that surprising, then, that Watson sees his world bathed in a pink, happy glow?

The pleasantness of his immediate surroundings is priming him to be in a positive mindset. But that mindset, as it happens, is altogether extraneous in forming other judgments. The houses would remain the same even if Watson were sad and depressed; only his perception of them would likely shift. Might they not then appear lonely and gloomy? But what if, say, he were forming his judgment as a prelude to approaching one of them, be it to ask to use a phone or to conduct a survey or to investigate a crime?

Suddenly, how safe the houses are matters a great deal. Your judgment of the house had better be correct—and not the result of a sunny day. Just as we need to know that our internal attics affect our judgment outside of our awareness, so, too, must we be aware of the impact that the external world has on those judgments.

When it comes to giving in to the ideal spring day, unprepared Watson is hardly alone—and should hardly be blamed for his reaction. Weather is an extremely powerful prime, one that affects us regularly even though we may have little idea of its impact. And they have no awareness at all of the connection—they genuinely believe themselves to be more fulfilled as individuals when they see the sun shining in a light blue sky, not unlike the one that Watson sees from his carriage window.

The effect goes beyond simple self- report and plays out in decisions that matter a great deal. On rainy days, students looking at potential colleges pay more attention to academics than they do on sunny days—and for every standard deviation increase in cloud cover on the day of the college visit, a student is 9 percent more likely to actually enroll in that college.

When the weather turns gray, financial traders are more likely to make risk-averse decisions; enter the sun, risk- seeking choice increases. It directly impacts what we see, what we focus on, and how we evaluate the world. Holmes, on the other hand, is oblivious to the weather—he has been engrossed in his newspaper for the entire train ride.

Who knows how the sun would have affected him had he not had a case on his mind and allowed his awareness to wander, but as it is, he focuses on entirely different details and a wholly different context.

Unlike Watson, he is understandably anxious and preoccupied. He is brooding. He is entirely consumed by the puzzle that he is about to encounter. Is it any surprise then that he sees in the houses a reminder of just the situation that has been preoccupying his mind?

Indeed he has. But for him that matter is far from mind. Recall the earlier discussion of our internal attic structure, our habitual biases and modes of thought. Those habitual thought patterns have to interact with the environment for the full effect of subtle, preconscious influences on our thought process to take hold; and it is they that largely impact what we notice and how that element then works its way through our minds. The words may seem innocuous enough, but hidden among them are the so-called target stimuli: words like lonely, careful, Florida, helpless, knits, and gullible.

Do they remind you of anything? If I lump them all together, they very well might remind you of old age. But spread them out over thirty sets of five-word combinations, and the effect is far less striking—so much less so, in fact, that not a single participant who saw the sentences —of a sample of sixty, in the two original studies of thirty participants each— realized that they had any thematic coherence.

You will walk slower now than you did before, and you may even hunch just a little both evidence of the ideomotor effect of the prime—or its influence on actual physical action.

You may even feel somehow older and wearier than you had previously. Which particular nodes were touched, however, and how the activation spread depends on your own attic and its specific features. If, for instance, you are from a culture that values highly the wisdom of the elderly, while you would have still likely slowed down your walk, you may have become slightly faster at the same cognitive tasks.

If, on the other hand, you are someone who holds a highly negative attitude toward the elderly, you may have experienced physical effects that were the opposite of those exhibited by the others: you may have walked more quickly and stood up just a bit straighter—to prove that you are unlike the target prime. Its effects differ. That, in essence, is why the same telegram may mean something different for Watson and for Holmes. For Holmes, it triggers the expected pattern associated with a mindset that is habitually set to solve crimes.

For Watson, it hardly matters and is soon trumped by the pretty sky and the chirping birds. And is that really such a surprise? Where Holmes easily sees sinister intent, Watson notices a beautiful and sympathetic face.

We must never forget to factor in the habitual mindset. Those studies of weather and mood? The effect disappeared if subjects were first made explicitly aware of the rainy day: if they were asked about the weather prior to stating their happiness level, the weather no longer had an impact.

However, if you are told the shot you received will have physically arousing effects, the mirroring will be mitigated. How does he manage to dissociate himself from the external influences that his environment exerts on his mind at any given moment?

That very awareness and presence are the key. And gradually, you may find yourself catching your mind before it leaps to a judgment—in which case you will be far more likely to listen to its wisdom. He remains constantly active and constantly vigilant, lest a stray prime worm its way into the walls of his pristine mind space. And while that constant attention may be exhausting, in situations that matter the effort may be well worth it—and with time, we may find that it is becoming less and less effortful.

All it takes, in essence, is to ask yourself the same questions that Holmes poses as a matter of course. Is something superfluous to the matter at hand influencing my judgment at any given point? If so, how do I adjust my perception accordingly? What has influenced my first impression—and has that first impression in turn influenced others? So where Watson at once passes judgment on a woman or a country house, Holmes immediately corrects his impression with a Yes, but.

His message is simple: never forget that an initial impression is only that, and take a moment to reflect on what caused it and what that may signify for your overall aim. Our brains will do certain things as a matter of course, whether or not we want it to. And we should never forget that potent combination of mindfulness and motivation. In other words, be skeptical of yourself and of your own mind. Observe actively, going beyond the passivity that is our default state.

Was something the result of an actual objective behavior before you term Mary saintly, did you ever observe her doing something that would lead you to believe it?

When I was in college, I helped run a global model United Nations conference. Each year we would travel to a different city and invite university students from all over to join in a simulation. Straightforward enough. Except, that is, when it came to the prizes. My first year I noticed that Oxford and Cambridge went home with a disproportionate number of speaker awards.

Were those students simply that much better, or was there something else going on? I suspected the latter. What was going on? The following year I decided to see if I could find out. I tried to watch my reaction to each student as he spoke, noting my impressions, the arguments that were raised, how convincing the points were, and how persuasively they were argued. Put two students next to each other, have them say the exact same thing, and I would like the one with the British accent more.

It was not a pleasant realization. My next step was to actively resist it. I tried to focus on content alone: what was each student saying and how was he saying it? Did it add to the discussion? Did it raise points in need of raising? Try as I might, I kept finding myself ensnared by the intonation and accent, by the cadence of sentences and not their content. And here it gets truly scary: at the end, I still had the urge to give my Oxford delegate the prize for best speaker.

She really was the best, I found myself saying. My awards would be well deserved even if they did happen to go to an Oxford student. It was everyone else who was biased. When I looked at my painstaking notes, I found several students who had consistently outperformed her. My notes and my memory and impression were at complete odds. In the end, I went with the notes. But it was a struggle up until the last moment.

And so it is essential to ask, when in the grip of a profound intuition this is a wonderful person; a beautiful house; a worthy endeavor; a gifted debater : on what is my intuition based? And can I really trust it—or is it just the result of the tricks of my mind?

But even beyond the realization is the constant practice of the thing. Accurate intuition is really nothing more than practice, of letting skill replace learned heuristics. We just end up doing so because of repeat exposure and practice—and a lack of the same mindful attention that Holmes makes sure to give to his every thought. We may not realize that we have reinforced our brains to think in a certain way, but that is in fact what we have done. Any habit is a habit that can be changed into another habit.

Over time, the skill can change the heuristic. His habits have been formed over countless opportunities, twenty-four hours a day, days a year, for every year since his early childhood. If he can do it, so can we. It will just take time. Being aware is the first step. But how does he go from awareness to something more, something actionable? 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. Not the "how to think like sherlock" im expecting, i enjoyed the mental exercise though. I am a Conan Doyle fan from way back. Quick read but not too much to digest.

Other books by Nonfiction. The Imaginary Life: A Novel. An Experiment on the Word: Reading Alma Other books by Daniel Smith. Related articles.

The Plot Thickens. Review: Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman. The first edition of the novel was published in , and was written by Maria Konnikova. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of pages and is available in Hardcover format.

The main characters of this non fiction, psychology story are ,. Please note that the tricks or techniques listed in this pdf are either fictional or claimed to work by its creator. We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you. Some of the techniques listed in Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes may require a sound knowledge of Hypnosis, users are advised to either leave those sections or must have a basic understanding of the subject before practicing them.