SECRET 8

“Let Us Calmly Define Our Position”

Let us get a firm grip of the very little which we do know, so that when fresh facts arise we may be ready to fit them into their places.

—“THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT”

 

 

 

 

 

Grace under pressure: Conan Doyle certainly knew a lot about staying calm in desperate circumstances. In 1880, when he was just twenty-one, he signed on for a six-month stint as the surgeon for an Arctic whaling ship. One day when he was out seal hunting on a large ice floe, he slipped and fell into the freezing ocean. No one saw him fall; he was on his own. The edge of the ice floe was too slippery to hold on to, and he began to sink. At the last minute, in what he later described as a “nightmare tug-of-war,” he grabbed the hind flippers of the large seal he had just killed and was able to pull himself out of the water, being careful to distribute his weight so as not to pull the seal into the water along with him. His cool, quick thinking had saved his life, and the captain of the ship gave him a new nickname: The Great Northern Diver.

Conan Doyle gave Holmes many of his own surgeon-like qualities: a steady temperament, an unflappable personality, and the innate urge to move toward a problem and solve it rather than run away and find an easier, less-challenging task. Complications are, after all, a surgeon’s stock in trade. Throughout the Holmes canon, Conan Doyle provides a unique insight into the mind-set of someone who is tasked with making life-and-death decisions on a daily basis.

If you’re facing a difficult problem and you’re unsure how to proceed, start by listening to Holmes’s advice in “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot.” It was one of the master detective’s most perplexing cases. While staying with Watson in Cornwall, Holmes is asked to help solve a tantalizing mystery: A woman was found sitting at her kitchen table, dead. Also sitting at the table were her two brothers, who for some unknown reason were babbling and gibbering like maniacs, their faces contorted in terror. They had never before experienced any mental problems and were considered to be upstanding members of the town. Many of the local residents are convinced they were the victims of a supernatural attack.

Holmes investigates, but can find not even the slightest clue of what went wrong. He hits the proverbial brick wall, and so suggests to Watson that they take a walk on the seaside cliffs and search for ancient arrowheads:

“Now, let us calmly define our position, Watson,” he continued as we skirted the cliffs together. “Let us get a firm grip of the very little which we do know, so that when fresh facts arise we may be ready to fit them into their places.”

Holmes then proceeds to recount the facts of the case as he understands them. He offers a few tentative theories, discards them, then drops the subject altogether. “Meanwhile,” he says, “we shall put the case aside until more accurate data are available, and devote the rest of our morning to the pursuit of Neolithic man.” In other words: Let’s hunt for arrowheads and have a little fun. Watson is amazed. “I may have commented upon my friend’s power of mental detachment,” he tells the reader, “but never have I wondered at it more than upon that spring morning in Cornwall when for two hours he discoursed upon Celts, arrowheads, and shards, as lightly as if no sinister mystery were waiting for his solution.”

When in doubt, chill out. Review, regroup, and refresh. We see this pattern repeated over and over in the Holmes stories. In “Silver Blaze,” Holmes says, “At least I have got a grip of the essential facts of the case. I shall enumerate them to you, for nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person, and I can hardly expect your cooperation if I do not show you the position from which we start.” And in “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” he admonishes a flustered client who has just shown up at his door: “Please arrange your thoughts and let me know, in their due sequence, exactly what those events are which have sent you out unbrushed and unkempt, with dress boots and waistcoat buttoned awry, in search of advice and assistance.”

Again and again, when faced with a difficult situation, Holmes brings order to chaos and counters emotion with logic. In The Sign of Four, he tells Watson:

“It is of the first importance,” he cried, “not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.”

Another reason why Holmes was so successful is that he wasn’t afraid to admit when he was stumped. He never tried to pretend he knew the solution to a hard case and didn’t feel the need to constantly act like a genius. He also understood the benefits of unplugging. One of his most famous lines is found in “The Red-Headed League,” when, faced with a particularly tough case, he replies, “It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.” In other words, leave me alone while I puff on my pipe for an hour and just think. Holmes was often prone to vegging out, spending hours staring into space or playing his violin, recharging his batteries, allowing his subconscious to work through the minute details of his cases. In fact, Conan Doyle took pains to make clear that it was Holmes’s dedication to relaxation as well as the science of detection that made him such a success. Take this account of Watson’s from “The Red-Headed League”:

In his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James’s Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.

Today, psychologists and performance consultants emphasize the importance of taking breaks, even when you’re on a tight deadline. Although it can feel counterintuitive, stepping back and disengaging for a few minutes helps prevent mental fatigue and burnout; it’s like pressing the reset button on a computer.

So remember: When you feel your mind start to falter, resist the urge to push on through and squeeze more performance out of your tired brain cells. Instead, create your own tobacco-free version of Holmes’s famous pipe-smoking reveries: Go for a short walk, for instance, or send all of your calls to voicemail for a half hour.

Oh, as for those mysterious deaths at Cornwall—well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. Read “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” for yourself and see if you can spot how Holmes applied the principles I outlined here to solve one of his most entertaining (and baffling) mysteries.