How to Think Like Sherlock (16 page)

Implementation intentions

If you need to remember to do something on a regular basis, then this might work for you. It is a system of self-regulation so that you might tell yourself, ‘I must take my pills with my cup of tea just before bedtime’.

Brain-training games

Sudoku and crosswords are considered an excellent way to preserve memory faculty and can help fend off conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease.

Put your memories in their place

This is a technique employed by some of the world’s leading exponents of memory feats, so let’s look at it in a little more detail after a quick break for a quiz …

Quiz 18 – Elementary, dear reader … Part IV

Archie is the getaway driver for a gang of robbers who plan to rob a local post office. They enter the shop at quarter to six in the evening and hold up the staff as they are cashing up for the day. The robbers have told Archie to have the motor running and ready to go at six o’clock precisely.

Sure enough, from his driver’s seat, Archie watches the gang enter the post office at a quarter to six. Ten minutes later, he looks at the clock on the dashboard and sees that it is five to six. A minute later it says, as expected, four minutes to six. But when he looks again two minutes later, it still says four minutes to six. ‘The time sure drags when you’re tense,’ he thinks to himself. A minute later he looks at the clock again. Now it says the time is five to six. Utterly bewildered, he starts to panic. Is time really going backwards? Is he losing his mind? A minute later, he looks once more at the clock, realises he is actually quite sane and hurriedly powers up the engine as the gang emerge from the post office, swag-bags in hand. What was happening to time?

Taking a Walk Down Memory Lane

‘A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use.’

‘THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS’

This memory method relies on your intimate knowledge of a place and is particularly useful for memorising a lot of connected information, such as a list. Once you have mastered it, you should be able to recall a list of items far longer than the traditional seven or so.

This technique goes under a number of different names. Some know it as the Memory Palace, others as the Method of Loci or the Roman Room Technique, to name but a few. Underlying the system is the selection of a place that you know really well such as your current home, or one from your childhood, or perhaps the local high street or the office (especially if you’re a workaholic). You could even focus on a single room if it has lots of elements in it that you are familiar with.

Let’s say you’ve opted for your childhood home. You then need to fix firmly in your mind a route through the house. Start with your key in the front door. Open the door and step into the hallway. Plot a path taking in all the different rooms, upstairs and downstairs. Once you have the route established, you can use it again and again, every time there is a new list of information you want to memorise.

If there are more things to remember than there are rooms in the house, consider developing the system so that as you walk your route, you take in several features in each room. For instance, rather than associating only one thing with the kitchen, you could picture your fridge, the kitchen table, the toaster and the sink. That’s space for four new things.

Each of the familiar elements on your route is known as a ‘memory peg’. The job now is to hang each item you wish to remember on a different peg. Let’s say you are off to the shops but you can’t find a pen so you need to carry your shopping list in your head. The first item is a bottle of milk, which we’ll place on the front door step. The next is a newspaper, which we’ll conveniently slot into the letter box. Next is half a dozen eggs. These we place on the living room mantelpiece to use in place of vases. Meanwhile, the shirt you want to buy is hanging in the front room window where the curtains normally are. It doesn’t matter how weird things get in your memory palace. In fact, the stranger things are, the easier they are to remember.

The more you use this technique, the more elements you will be able to remember. Some experts claim to be able to recall hundreds of things in this manner.

But that’s enough of the theory. See how you get on with these challenges, perhaps using one or more of the techniques above. The first of the following two exercises will test your short-term memory, while the latter will give a work-out to your long-term memory.

Quiz 19 – Total Recall

Look at the items collected from a murder scene for one minute. When the minute is up, turn over the page and attempt to list all the pieces of evidence on a separate sheet of paper.

Quiz 20 – Remembering that Crime Doesn’t Pay

Have a look at the following list of criminals and their convictions. Once you have read and absorbed the information, turn the page and read on. Wait for ten minutes, then try to write down the details of each of the convictions. Wait a further half an hour and repeat. Do it again in a few hours. How has your memory coped?

1.
One-legged Mary got ten years for battering her husband with her wooden crutch.

2.
Skinny Jim was fined two pounds and ten shillings for stealing a loaf of bread.

3.
Dead-eye Pete was hanged for shooting dead a rival poker player.

4.
Burlington Bertie got three years for defrauding a jeweller.

5.
Nervous Ned was shot at dawn for deserting from the army.

6.
Buxom Bella: three months for soliciting.

7.
Angry Alexander was thrown into the clink for two nights for being drunk and disorderly.

Reaching Conclusions

‘It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

‘THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET’

Holmes’s gift (and occasional curse) was his unearthly ability to alight upon the truth where others had failed to do so. To conclude your crash course in thinking like the Great Detective, let’s take a look at the modus operandi he used to reach the right answer so often:

Be in the right frame of mind

Seeking the truth is an exercise best done when rested and relaxed. Fuel yourself too. A team of researchers in 2010 found that making judgements is best achieved when your blood sugar levels are at their optimum level.

Gather your raw information

As we have seen, Holmes gathered data from a huge range of sources – the crime scene, eye-witnesses, personal experience, reference materials etc.

Evaluate the data

Set aside that which seems flawed or not useful.

Be a reader of human nature

In
The Sign of Four
, Holmes quoted the historian and philosopher, Winwood Reade, on the subject:

He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.

Search for the anomaly

The out-of-place detail can be the thread that unravels an enigma. As Holmes said, ‘what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.’

Think the unthinkable

As Holmes proclaimed in
The Valley of Fear
, ‘how often is imagination the mother of truth?’

Formulate your hypotheses

Evaluate the likelihood of each hypothesis against the known facts. When Holmes was accused of straying into guesswork in
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, he responded: ‘Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation.’

Don’t mistake correlation for causation

As an example, we live in an age when the ice caps are melting and obesity is increasing, but that does not mean one causes the other or that they are linked in any way beyond coincidence.

Be rigorous

Do not become fixated on a single particular theory. Entertain all the possibilities.