How to Approach Life Mindfully, According to Sherlock Holmes

This book will appeal to both Sherlock fans as well as those who want to think better. It contains useful and timeless methods and questions applicable to a variety of important issues in life and business. We could all benefit from A few lessons from Sherlock Holmes.

Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is one of the essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest.(Holmes; The Valley of Fear)

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. (Holmes; A Study in Scarlet)

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. (Holmes; The Sign of the Fear)

Judgment can do without knowledge but not knowledge without judgment. (Montaigne)

I have not all my facts yet, but I do not think there are any insuperable difficulties. Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories. (Holmes; Wisteria Lodge)

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Holmes; A Scandal in Bohemia)

I realize that if you ask people to account for “facts”, they usually spend more time finding reasons for them than finding out whether they are true. … They skip over the facts but carefully deduce inferences. They normally begin thus: “How does this come about?” But does it do so? That is what they ought to be asking. (Montaigne)

The principal difficulty in your case … lay in the fact of there being too much evidence. What was vital was overlaid and hidden by what was irrelevant. Of all the facts which were presented to us we had to pick just those which we deemed to be essential, and then piece them together in their order, so as to reconstruct this very remarkable chain of events. (Holmes; The Naval Treaty)

The smallest point may be the most essential. (Holmes; A Study in Scarlet)

What we see is all we think is there — What often leads us astray in an investigation is that we adopt the theory which is most likely to account for the “visible” and found facts but what if the important is left out? What is not reported, withheld, hidden?

Sherlock Holmes was a man … who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. (Dr. Watson; The Man with the Twisted Lip)