Stories by Maria Konnikova

Once upon a time, Sherlock Holmes urged us to maintain a crisp and clean brain attic: out with the useless junk; in with meticulously organized boxes that are uncluttered by useless paraphernalia.

Holmes often faults the hapless Watson–and many others who come under his exacting gaze–for a failure to use proper logic. But his admonishments often remain general, noting an overall failure to demonstrate the requisite logical finesse without necessarily taking the time to point out where exactly the reasoner went wrong.

I’d like to continue today with the tale of the “Copper Beeches” that we left off last time. The exchange between Holmes and Watson on the nature of country houses does not end with the initial dialogue.

Do we all experience the world in the same way? Is the same event actually the same event when viewed from the vantage point of each observer, each participant, each accidental onlooker?

Confidence in ourselves and in our skills allows us to push our limits, achieve more than we otherwise would, try even in those borderline cases where a less confident person would bow out.

It’s easy to see Sherlock Holmes as a hard, cold reasoning machine: the epitome of calculating logic. And it’s true. In many ways, the ideal Holmes is almost a precursor to the computer, taking in countless data points as a matter of course, analyzing them with startling precision, and spitting out a solution.

Details are important, often crucial. But focus exclusively on the details, without taking a step back, and you run the risk of getting lost in minutiae – and more likely than not, of missing any actual importance the details might contain.

Today’s lesson from Sherlock Holmes deals with learning to cull and to cultivate knowledge in such a way that your decision process will be optimized for the question at hand, and not get bogged down in irrelevant minutiae – a lesson that is all too relevant in the age of the internet, when we have [...]

Today’s lesson from Sherlock Holmes is, in a sense, the most difficult to apply on a regular basis: pay attention to what isn’t there, not just what is.

Sherlock Holmes isn’t what you’d call a traditional psychologist. In fact, he isn’t even real (despite the letters that to this day arrive at 221B Baker Street).