How to Think Like Sherlock Read Free Page A

listener. Tune in to the hourly news bulletin on the radio. Really focus in on what is being related. When the broadcast finishes, switch off the radio and jot down some notes about what was said. Can you remember each of the stories in the right order? And can you recall the broad subject or have you retained some serious detail from each? When you begin, you might be rather shocked by how little has soaked in. But if you keep up the practice for a while, you will likely see some striking improvement. Similarly, sit in your garden on a summer’s afternoon. Close your eyes but keep your ears open. Note all the different sounds that you can hear, whether man-made or from nature. Such an exercise can help you become better attuned to the environment around you.
    Improving your listening skills when you are part of a dialogue is a different challenge altogether. For the majority of us, when we converse we are more interested in being heard than hearing. But by being this way, we risk missing out on learning lots of new information that might prove very valuable to us. Here are a few tips for improving your listening skills when in conversation:

     
Ask questions
That way, you encourage the other person to speak and yourself to listen.
Don’t interrupt
Avoid the temptation to interrupt, even if it is to agree with the other person. Listening and speaking at the same time is a very difficult skill to master.
Focus on the speaker
It sounds so obvious but think how often you have been introduced to someone only to forget their name a moment later.
Cut out distractions
If you want to really listen to someone, try to engage in conversation in a place where there isn’t a television showing the football over their shoulder, or where the latest object of your affections isn’t visible. Keeping eye contact with the speaker is a good way of maintaining your listening.
Repeat it
Strange as it sounds, repeating something of particular interest that has been said can help lodge it in your mind. You can repeat it quietly to yourself so as not to unnerve the speaker by seeming to mimic what they are saying.
     

    One of the great advantages of becoming a really good listener is that it builds bonds of trust with those you are listening to and will encourage them to listen to you in turn.
     
    Quiz 5 – Not a Pretty Picture
     
    In this exercise, take a minute to study the artist’s impression of Dangerous Dave, a notorious robber. Reproduce Dave’s face on a separate sheet of paper.

     
    Reading Between the Lines
     
‘I read nothing except the criminal news and the agony column.’
‘THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR’
    It is probably fair to assume that Holmes made the above statement somewhat archly. Able to pluck just the right fact at the most opportune moment, he clearly had a significant breadth of reading. However, his quote about reading only news and gossip columns is suggestive of his ability to fix his focus on the material most useful to the job in hand. But rather than restricting his reading, it is far more likely that Holmes was an accomplished exponent of speed reading, able to digest large amounts of text at a high tempo and extract the information he required.
    Studies suggest that an average adult reading speed is somewhere between 175 and 350 words per minute. The trick to speed reading is not merely to see more words in a shorter space of time, but to become more efficient at reading. It is all well and good to scan your eyes over, say, 500 words per minute, but not much use if the meaning of those words does not sink in at such a pace.
    Here are a few ideas as to how to become a more efficient reader:

Read in an atmosphere conducive to concentration
Go somewhere quiet. Turn off the television, the radio, your telephone … anything that might distract you.
Learn to chunk!
When we learn to read, we do so in a word-by-word form. However, we are capable of reading blocks of words. Indeed, it has been argued