Method Sherlock or "How to develop observation, deduction, and flexibility of thinking"
Sherlock Holmes - one of the perennial appeal of illustrations sharp mind. Skills possessed by the character (and which he borrowed from his prototype Joseph Bell, a brilliant physician and mentor Conan Doyle), will be useful in any profession, from diagnosis to journalism.
Train of thought
The most spontaneous answer to the question how to become Sherlock might sound like this: "First buy a black coat." If you use the terminology of American Psychologist, the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who published in 2011 the book "Think slow ... solved quickly," is the reaction of the so-called "quick-thinking" - a system that is responsible for the momentary knowledge of the world and cataloging instinctual feelings. "Quick thinking," responds to the circumstances immediately and very directly, with the result that often errs, causing us to make irrational decisions.
But in order to think, like Sherlock Holmes, you need to use a different system - "slow." It was she, according to Kahneman, is responsible for the deliberate and conscious formation of thoughts, decisions, conclusions and assessments. Like any function of the human brain, the system can slow thinking to strengthen and develop.
As in sports, workout should start with light exercises in a small amount, gradually moving on to more complex and time-consuming. For starters, you can borrow from friends a few textbooks on various subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry and other disciplines that involve problem solving. This will not only train the system slow thinking (in fact in the process of intellectual activity it is used), but also to broaden my horizons, to recover lost since the days of school knowledge and indicating to study interesting scientific field.
Corrosive - another quality that you want to master the future deduction. To raise her confidence, it is necessary to find the areas that really excite curiosity. What they will be, by and large, it does not matter: the emotional response is always pushing the man to a deep study of the subject, makes him constantly increasing amount of knowledge, and with it the length of the border of contact with the unknown, the existence of which invariably causes the mind to new searches.
Deduction and induction
When the mind will be prepared and saturated with various useful information, you can proceed to the exercises for the development of logical thinking: deductive and inductive. After all, the character of Conan Doyle used both methods - which, alas, is shown in the series BBC «Sherlock" is somewhat weaker than in the books by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Deduction - a method in which a particular logical path is derived from the general: "All metals are conductive. Gold - a metal. So gold is conducting. " Induction, by contrast, brings the total private: "I am a Muscovite, and I remember that snowfall each winter. So, in Moscow in the winter always snowing. " Sherlock Holmes, examining the crime scene or evaluating others, often going from the particular to the general and back, moving freely in both directions of logic: "John military bearing, tan hands only to arms, psychosomatic limp, - then went to war. Where were the military operations in recent years? In Afghanistan. So, the war in Afghanistan. "
However, its main conclusions had been deductive and arose in the mind of the great detective, when he tore his violin or pondering smoking his pipe. At these moments, Sherlock Holmes turned to his phenomenal knowledge of history and criminology, and classified the case, relying on the "crime family tree." It assigns him a place in the group: "The murder of the inheritance," "The murder out of jealousy," "Stealing will", etc. This gave a motive, and the motive of the suspects gave. That was the essence of the deductive method of Sherlock Holmes. Induction gave him food for thought, while a deduction gave the answer.
To exercise the logical thinking there are a lot of exercises. For example, "The concepts of order," in which you want to place a few words from the general to the particular values or vice versa. May be useful as chess or poker. In addition, it is important to learn to avoid logical errors of judgment, having studied them, for example, the book Abner Uyomov "Logical errors. How do they interfere with the right mindset. "
How to raise a detective?
To learn to notice details, interpret them correctly and not be distracted during the observations and analysis will be required to exercise the development of voluntary and involuntary attention, as well as the training of mental flexibility.
Involuntary attention - a system reaction to the stimuli, a sort of "peripheral vision" in regard to the perception of reality. To develop it, you can make it a rule to observe the familiar objects and places with a lack of lighting and different sound background (naturally, with pleasant music and a sharp unpleasant sounds), as well as to get used to mark items that attract attention in the transition from one species activity to another. This allows you to cultivate one's sensitivity to fluctuations in reality and to learn not to let curious details that can be the key to the situation or the nature of man.
Voluntary attention, or, simply, concentration also plays a huge role to foster the ability to think clearly. On average, thanks to willpower a person is able to hold the attention on an object just 20 minutes. To increase this figure will approach training with so-called "Entertaining table" and its analogues. Each table is a structure with randomly distributed and variously illustrated with numbers from 1 to 35 or 1 to 90. The goal is to find all the numbers in ascending or descending order, at a cost the least amount of time.
To train the attention to detail can also be taking into the habit of watching for strangers: at work, in the street, in social networks. In this case, it is important to assess a person from different angles, allowing for multiple answers to some questions about what kind of profession he can deal with, what his marital status, character and habits. This will develop the flexibility of thinking and stop every time the only option to settle for an answer, which may be incorrect more likely.
However, the main secret of the devil's observation, it seems, is not the amount of training, and there is strong interest. After all, with increased emotional value of the subject matter and the emergence of sufficient action to automate the experience a person has a so-called posleproizvolnoe attention, the focus of which may not subside for hours. It allowed posleproizvolnoe attention to Sherlock Holmes to solve crimes. It also helps scientists make discoveries, writers - to find the best wording, etc. In addition, the presence of posleproizvolnoe attention - that's nice: it relieves the mind, since the brain ceases to spend energy to maintain the focus and force can throw at solving tasks.
- Sherlock Holmes is not just a thought slowly - he understands what it takes to separate the objective and subjective thinking. When you see a person, you inevitably arise related associations, and you will quickly decide good or bad. Exercise, which would be used to combat this Sherlock - is to ask: "What is that I think and feel, is my subjective assessment? I'm just going to keep that in mind, making his real opinion. "
In addition, if we want to assess the environmental reality of the objective, it is necessary each time to realize why we have taken out a particular judgment, and test yourself by learning from the man himself, his friends, or the internet, we were right or not. Such a possibility is not always available, so you can use for training posted online video courses. Within them you can watch the Parties of special scenes, evaluate, they are lying or not, and then to find out the correct answer.
Doctors and lawyers apply logical thinking skills and habits to be focused all the time, but these abilities are useful in any profession. Even for writers, it is important to understand people and be able to focus on the job without constantly checking email or social networks. While working on the book "mastermind", for example, I realized that I do not have the habit to keep the focus of attention. I tried to make an effort of itself is not distracted by the internet, but it was incredibly hard. Then I installed a computer program Freedom, which blocks a global network for a specified time, from two minutes to eight hours. It helped me a lot. We can recall that Sherlock Holmes is also deliberately creating the conditions for currently thought process, he played the violin, smoked a pipe, and even drove Dr. Watson, that he does not interfere with it.
But what about when we can not isolate themselves from the external environment? It seems that Conan Doyle and helps to answer this question. Many say that Sherlock Holmes was cold, but it is not: it occur all the same emotions as any other human, but he is able to push them aside and accept the situation without subjective assessment. Such skills are needed to cultivate a special. To do this, you can start a notebook with two or three columns: "objective observation", "subjective evaluation" and "What can be a subjective assessment." Holmes held it all in the mind, but we, before it becomes a habit, you need to take notes.
I think in today's world of Investigation "Sherlock Holmes" has become smaller because of the domination of technology. Instead try using logic to understand whether a suspect is lying, we are trying to estimate the speed of his heart, or to analyze the work of the brain. However, in my opinion, we know too little about the brain to fully rely on existing technology analysis of its reactions.
