Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes – Maria Konnikova
No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary intellect merely a gift of fiction, or can we learn to cultivate these abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and at home?
We can, says psychologist and journalist Maria Konnikova. Drawing on twenty-first-century neuroscience and psychology, Mastermind explores Holmes’s unique methods of ever-present mindfulness, astute observation, and logical deduction. In doing so, it shows how each of us, with some self-awareness and a little practice, can employ these same methods to sharpen our perceptions, solve difficult problems, and enhance our creative powers.
by Mike
Alright, so I may or may not have had a magic phase (no, not the card game, I mean like close-up and such). This was one of the books that touched on skills required for any scrawny, inferiority complex ridden control freak-teen who took a liking to mentalism. The author didn’t write this as a ‘how to be a genius’ but rather a psychological analysis of the mental methods Arthur Conan Doyle adopted to shape the famous character.
It uses many examples from the stories and builds a concise array of tricks that range from exercises to mental habits to reshape one’s perception and logic. It never truly goes into true ‘mastermind’ territory but delivers enough nice mnemonics, thought traps, and at least one actual case in which Doyle solved a murder mystery to be a fun read. I really use the technique to remember phone numbers or longer strings of digits to great effect and started looking at the sensory input the world provides with a more holistic and fun technical awareness.
This one, in its core, probably has more in common with something like Thinking Fast And Slow or Atomic Habits, but to me it was very fun to get it served with a strong sauce of Victorian era deduction and savvy quotes.
