Mastermind Quotes

“the most powerful mind is the quiet mind. It is the mind that is present, reflective, mindful of its thoughts and its state. It doesn’t often multitask, and when it does, it does so with a purpose.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“A change in perspective, in physical location, quite simply forces mindfulness. It forces us to reconsider the world, to look at things from a different angle. And sometimes that change in perspective can be the spark that makes a difficult decision manageable, or that engenders creativity where none existed before.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“Our education might stop, if we so choose. Our brains’ never does. The brain will keep reacting to how we decide to use it. The difference is not whether or not we learn, but what and how we learn.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“every time you find yourself making a judgment immediately upon observing—in fact, even if you don’t think you are, and even if everything seems to make perfect sense—train yourself to stop and repeat: It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Then go back and restate it from the beginning and in a different fashion than you did the first time around. Out loud instead of silently. In writing instead of in your head. It will save you from many errors in perception.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“Imagination is all about new possibilities, eventualities that don’t exist, counterfactuals, a recombination of elements in new ways. It is about the untested. And the untested is uncertain. It is frightening—even”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“A helpful exercise is to describe the situation from the beginning, either out loud or in writing, as if to a stranger who isn’t aware of any of the specifics—much like Holmes talks his theories through out loud to Watson. When Holmes states his observations in this way, gaps and inconsistencies that weren’t apparent before come to the surface.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“We want to learn to pay attention better, to become superior observers, but we can’t hope to achieve this if we thoughtlessly pay attention to everything. That’s self-defeating. What we need to do is allocate our attention mindfully”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“Attention is a limited resource.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“for every standard deviation increase in cloud cover on the day of the college visit, a student is 9 percent more likely to actually enroll in that college.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“It’s important to keep one thing in mind: we know only what we can remember at any given point. In other words, no amount of knowledge will save us if we can’t recall it at the moment we need it.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“Why do we so often fail at this final stage of perception? The answer lies in that very element we were discussing: engagement.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“Whatever the situation, answering the question of what, specifically, you want to accomplish will put you well on your way to knowing how to maximize your limited attentional resources. It will help direct your mind, prime it, so to speak, with the goals and thoughts that are actually important—and help put those that aren’t into the background.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“poker, or a business meeting from a gesture. If you learn first how to be selective accurately, in order to accomplish precisely what it is you want to accomplish, you will be able to limit the damage that System Watson can do by preemptively teaching it to not muck it up. The important thing is the proper, selective training—the presence of mind—coupled with the desire and the motivation to master your thought process.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“Write a checklist of steps to follow when making a diagnosis of a problem, be it a sick patient, a broken car, writer’s block, or whatever it is you face in your daily life, instead of trying to do it by so-called instinct. Checklists, formulas, structured procedures: those are your best bet—at least, according to Kahneman.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“you get only one thing out of this book, it should be this: the most powerful mind is the quiet mind. It is the mind that is present, reflective, mindful of its thoughts and its state. It doesn’t often multitask, and when it does, it does so with a purpose.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“your answer to the “what I want to accomplish” question must be flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances. If the available information changes, so should you. Don’t be afraid to deviate from a preset plan when it serves the greater objective”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“know only what we can remember at any given point. In other words, no amount of knowledge will save us if we can’t recall it at the moment we need it.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“even if we hear something denied—for example, Joe has no links to the Mafia—we may end up misremembering the statement as lacking the negator and end up believing that Joe does have Mafia links—and even if we don’t, we are much more likely to form a negative opinion of Joe.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“After World War II, physicist Richard Feynman was asked to serve on the State Curriculum Commission, to choose high school science textbooks for California. To his consternation, the texts appeared to leave students more confused than enlightened. Each book he examined was worse than the one prior. Finally, he came upon a promising beginning: a series of pictures, of a windup toy, an automobile, and a boy on a bicycle. Under each was a question: “What makes it go?” At last, he thought, something that was going to explain the basic science, starting with the fundamentals of mechanics (the toy), chemistry (the car), and biology (the boy). Alas, his elation was short lived. Where he thought to finally see explanation, real understanding, he found instead four words: “Energy makes it go.” But what was that? Why did it make it go? How did it make it go? These questions weren’t ever acknowledged, never mind answered. As Feynman put it, “That doesn’t mean anything. . . . It’s just a word!” Instead, he argued, “What they should have done is to look at the windup toy, see that there are springs inside, learn about springs, learn about wheels, and never mind ‘energy.’ Later on, when the children know something about how the toy actually works, they can discuss the more general principles of energy.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“the better they recalled the topics of conversation, the more extremely off their predictions were. In other words, the busier their brains were, the less they adjusted after forming an initial impression.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“How did the System Holmes machine become . . . a System Watson? Simple. Holmes says it himself: he had lost interest in the case. In his mind, it was already solved, down to the last detail—the visit, of which he thought so much that he decided it would be fine to disengage from everything else. And that’s a mistake he doesn’t normally make.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“a failure to use all senses equals a scene not seen to its full potential, attention that has not been allocated properly, and subconscious cues that color the attention that is allocated in a way that may not be optimal.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“motivation predicts higher academic performance, fewer criminal convictions, and better employment outcomes. Children who have a so-called “rage to master”—a term coined by Ellen Winner to describe the intrinsic motivation to master a specific domain—are more likely to be successful in any number of endeavors, from art to science.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“That, in a nutshell, is the scientific method: understand and frame the problem; observe; hypothesize (or imagine); test and deduce; and repeat. To follow Sherlock Holmes is to learn to apply that same approach not just to external clues, but to your every thought—and then turn it around and apply it to the every thought of every other person who may be involved, step by painstaking step.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“Fine. But just as fine are things that go beyond the detective’s purview, like learning to tell the quality of food from a glance or the proper chess move from a board or your opponent’s intention in baseball,”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“La mente más poderosa es la mente serena”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“What distinguishes them isn't a lack of failure but a lack of fear of failure, an openness that is the hallmark of the creative mind.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson argues that experts even see the world differently within their area of expertise: they see things that are invisible to a novice; they are able to discern patterns at a glance that are anything but obvious to an untrained eye; they see details as part of a whole and know at once what is crucial and what is incidental.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

“In that realization—that oftentimes it is best not to trust your own judgment—lies the key to improving your judgment to the point where it can in fact be trusted.”
― Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes