Is it possible to deduce like sherlock

But these differences meant that my immersion into Sherlock's world was all the more exciting. In my brain, I've always fashioned myself a bit of a detective.

I'm also a very detail-oriented person, and pride myself on being able to catch tiny errors and anachronisms, especially in writing.

I have a strange habit of accidentally memorizing information, especially phone numbers, which comes in handy a lot of the time. Oh, and I love to eavesdrop. I thought with all of these qualifications, that going Holmes this week would be a piece of cake. But, I soon learned that in reality, being Sherlock Holmes is nowhere close to elementary.

The game is afoot! The easiest spot to Holmes it up was on the subway for sure. Filled with a changing cast of characters, there were millions of deductions to be made, particularly in my longer commutes from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Every time I stepped on the train, I'd start playing what I labeled in my mind as "The Deduction Game," where I'd examine a person near me and try to decide where they were going, where they were coming from, what their life was like, etc.

As Holmes says, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I looked at the man next to me's work boots and imagined him coming home from a day's work in construction.

The two suit-clad bros behind me discussing their buddy's poor real estate decisions obviously worked in the Financial District. The young girl sleeping on her mom's shoulder was coming home from an overlong extra-curricular activity uptown. Living in New York, you learn to survive by not making waves. You keep your head down, you don't make eye contact, and you stay wrapped up in your own little universe.

But this week, as I tried to glean what I could from deductions, it meant that I had to pick up my eyes and really look at the people I was sharing the world with.

At first one must do things consciously and laboriously, but with practice the activities gradually become automatic and unconscious and a habit is established. Effective scientific observation also requires a good background, for only by being familiar with the usual can we notice something as being unusual or unexplained. Attention is a limited resource. Paying attention to one thing necessarily comes at the expense of another.

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.

Attentional blindness, paying attention to one thing at the expense of another, is often how pickpocketing works. Yet all is not lost. 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 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. One of the most important ways to facilitate imaginative thinking is through distance. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Sherlock Holmes was his power of throwing his brain out of action and switching all his thoughts on to lighter things whenever he had convinced himself that he could no longer work to advantage.

I remember that during the whole of that memorable day he lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus. For my own part I had none of this power of detachment, and the day, in consequence appeared to be interminable. Forcing your mind to take a step back is a tough thing to do. It seems counterintuitive to walk away from a problem that you want to solve.

But in reality, the characteristic is not so remarkable either for Holmes or for individuals who are deep thinkers. The fact that it is remarkable for Watson and that he self-admittedly lacks the skill goes a long way to explaining why he so often fails when Holmes succeeds.

Not only does distance facilitate imaginative thinking but it also helps counter short-term emotions. A final thought on Mindfulness comes from Sam McNerney. This kind of detached observation … allows people to experience fairly aversive thoughts and emotions as temporary events rather than experiences that require a response or an explanation.

How can we achieve mindfulness? Carlson mentions two strategies that both stress observation over questioning and introspection.

The first is nonevalution observation, which encourages people to consider information even if it threatens the ego. Carlson cites a study that primed participants with morbid thoughts about their death. Second, we should pay attention to all the available information in a given moment i.

If this sounds obvious consider that compared to untrained individuals, people with mindfulness training preform better on conflict monitoring tasks, orientation tasks, standardized tests and working memory tasks.

Follow your curiosity to The Art of Observation. Read Next. Thinking Reading Time: 12 minutes. Auden Engagement As children, we are remarkably aware. Well you will say Sherlock never meditated but if you will look carefully, he did. Remember when he got stuck on a case, he used to sit in a corner in his chair thinking deeply. Now to think on a single topic requires concentration and to concentrate one must free himself from all thoughts that are useless. Second, look for information that pertains to your field in which you want your deduction process to be at its peak.

No one is perfect, so leave the idea that everyone will have same level of deduction in every field. But this does not mean ignoring the facts that have have no relevance with each other.

It always looks like that but if you will look closely everything is connected to every other thing. Let me clarify what is clutter. Clutter actually are those things which will not effect your life in any process that is not useful in your field. Hollywood and TV sitcoms gossip. But what is the foremost important thing in deduction is to observe. Observe everything around you acutely. For example take a wall writing that somebody has written something on it.

Now from outside it means nothing except its literal meaning. Now the height at which the word is written will indicate the height of the person. A person usually starts writing on boards and walls at his eye level. So height can be easily deduced. If the word is going in an upward direction it will indicate his subconscious state which is that of a higher ambition. If the direction is falling down it indicates a state of depression or stress. Also notice he is writing it on a wall which is accessible to many people which confirms the previous fact that he is not in possession of it.

Now let us get back to the wall, if the wall was whitewashed and the letter is still there, carefully scratch the word and check after which layer of whitewash it becomes invisible.