A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes

The essential factor in this method consists in working back from observations of conditions to the causes which brought them about. It is often a question of deciding the doings of yesterday by the records found to-day.

Assume a crime has taken place and we are faced with the problem of how the criminal escaped from a locked room. Sometimes we need to think the other way around. The question is not how the criminal escaped but how he got into the room in the first place. Sometimes one problem solves the other. Test Our Theory- if it disagrees with the facts it is

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

“Checklist” routines for critical factors help - assuming I am competent enough to decide what factors are critical and that I can evaluate them

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.

We need to both observe the big picture - forest - and the details - trees - Sometimes the trivial or the most immaterial aspect of a case may be the most important but we need to learn how to separate between trifles that matter and those that don’t

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

The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish.

We all learn by experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative. (Holmes; Black Peter) Let us weigh the one against the other. (Holmes; The Priory School)