Introduction (part 2)

My Methods

Over the course of this experiment, I will be designing my own training regimen which will emphasize the three main traits of Holmes' incredible abilities:

1) Observation - Every person has details that make them different. The goal for this exercise will be to observe at least three details per person which make them unique (different colored socks, strange earrings, even something as small as ink smudges on a hand or fingernail cleanliness). Areas of particular interest include wrists and shoes. As a next level, play a game with yourself whenever you're bored. Find the most interesting detail about every person in the room. Have all of the people in the room "compete" in your head for the title of most-interesting.

2) Deduction - The science of deduction, like chicken sexing (look it up), requires a very special kind of practice. It's not enough to go through the motions of adding up information and coming to conclusions - you need to know you if are right. For this exercise, find a proposition (in the logical sense) that you know to be true - I'll say it again, something that you ALREADY KNOW. Your challenge: prove it in as many ways as you can. For example, say you know that your roommate was the last one to open the fridge. You may come to this conclusion by observing that his juice is now in front of yours, or even that it is slightly warmer than yours. If you get very good, you may even be able to deduce that the bowl into which he poured his cereal is sitting in the sink, meaning that he not only opened the fridge, but that he used your milk.

3) Memory - Over the course of Sherlock Holmes' adventures, he makes a habit of pulling useful information seemingly out of nowhere, and utilizing it to finish the case on which he is currently working. The reality is, of course, much cooler. He extracts all of the aforementioned information from HIS MIND. The truly brilliant thing about Holmes is not just his deductive reasoning, but his KNOWLEDGE. In order to function like Holmes does, without the need to look up other than the most obscure details, one must have a lot of background information from which to draw. In order to build this, I propose exercise number three. Whilst noticing your details and making your deductions, should you come across a detail that you believe might be useful at some point, write it down (Ex: "Wow, if I knew more about how a french press operates, I could determine just how new to their job this Starbucks employee is."). At your leisure, look over the list of things you wrote down - look them up. By far the most boring, and equally useful. As to committing the information you learn to memory, I have two words for you: Mind Palaces. But we'll get to that later.

If you have any questions regarding my methods, need more examples, or just want to share your input, feel free to leave a comment.