A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes

Don’t think about how to get things done, instead ask whether they’re worth doing in the first place He will hold a card back for years in order to play it at the moment when the stake is best worth winning. (Holmes; Charles Augustus Milverton) You must play your cards as best you can when such a stake is on the table. (Holmes; Charles Augustus Mil

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive. (Holmes;

Strip away things that don’t count and focus on what matters - the core Eliminate possibilities - What can we exclude? - Assuming the true solution or explanation is among the considered possibilities

But don’t try to over-simplify complex matters - especially when we deal with systems with complicated interactions It is rarely permissible to base a diagnosis upon a single sign.

Put yourself in the other person’s shoes Well, now, let us put ourselves in the place of Jonathan Small. Let us look at it from his point of view...Now what could Jonathan Small do? (Holmes; The Sign of the Four)

Patience - Take time to think things over Sherlock Holmes was a man...who,

Don’t miss the forest for the trees - It is not the amount of information that counts but the relevant one.

It we could see the world the way others see it, we easier understand why they do what they do

The fatal mistake which the ordinary policeman make is this, that he gets his theory first, and then makes the facts fit it, instead of getting his facts first and making all his little observations and deductions until he is driven irresistibly by them into an elucidation in a direction he may never have originally contemplated.