What We Can Learn from Sherlock Holmes . . .

Sherlock Holmes is, without a doubt, one of the greatest literary characters of all time. With the recent release of the latest movie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character has the spotlight shined upon him once again. After reading the stories and watching the recent blockbuster movie, I realized that there are many lessons that can be learned from this literary wonder.

1) Separating emotion from logic

While working any case, Sherlock Holmes takes himself out of the scenario and detaches himself emotionally from the case, suspects, or anyone involved.

This is, by far, the most difficult thing for people to do. When such factors as family, money, career and future are involved it is natural for emotion to be tied into every decision and every scenario. I think it’s essential that we sometimes take ourselves out of the equation and think about things objectively. I’m not advocating removing emotion completely, not only is that impossible but it is inhuman, but we cannot allow our emotions to cloud our vision.

2) Attention to details while still considering the big picture

Sherlock Holmes analyzes every detail that others would not have even considered. He can tell where an individual has been from the color of the residue on the footprint, and where in the world a soldier was stationed from the color of his tan. Despite the facts that Holmes is inundated with minor details, he never ceases to connect the dots and fill-in the big picture.

We live in a world where we are bombarded with information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. We are constantly seeing new tweets, Facebook status updates, RSS feeds from our favorite blogs, and real-time news headlines. Successful people have a filter that sifts important details and tidbits of information from the unimportant. There are many tools already in place to help us create a filter. Twitter Lists and Facebook groups are some examples. Find the filter that works for you, and use the important information to connect to your “big picture.”

3) You are the only one of your kind.

Sherlock Holmes is the only “consultant detective” in the world. All levels of society seek his expertise, from average citizens to royalty.

If the market was saturated with “consultant detectives,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have probably had to find another profession for his character. We are all individuals, and we all thrive in certain environments and situations. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, the key is to acknowledge those strengths and make them better, acknowledge the weaknesses and work on them, and properly assimilate our individualism with society.

4) Asking for help.

As intelligent and cunning as Sherlock Holmes is, he could not have solved many of his cases without the help of his dear friend Dr. Watson. When he was limited in resources, Holmes outsourced the tasks he could not handle to his “Baker Street Irregulars” (a group of adolescents that Holmes employed as his deputies.)

There is no shame in acknowledging the fact that sometimes you cannot do it all on your own and asking for help. PERIOD.

5) Unwinding and relaxing after a long-days work

Sherlock Holmes plays the violin to relax, unwind and ease his mind.

After a long days work, or stressful situations we need an opportunity to relax and unwind. Whether it’s watching a movie, reading a book, or smoking Hookah (yes that’s mine) we all need someway of resting our ever running minds.

These are some of the lessons that I took from reading Sherlock Holmes and watching the movie. There are more lessons to be considered which will be in Part 2 of this post.