Sherlock has shown that he can retain vast amounts of knowledge and his recall of that memory is lightning fast. The same process of memory and recall can be used by students to increase their grade point average and remember more content in shorter amounts of time.

Three Major Concepts:

making a memory palace

critical thinking

speed reading

Memory Palace

This concept is used by Sherlock to explain his mindset and how he stores and uses his memories. He constructs a building in his mind and stores the memories in rooms that interconnect and allows him to shift through large amounts of data easily. It is fairly easy to construct one, but takes a life time to master.

pick a place that you're familiar with

draw a blueprint of the building and label each room

close your eyes and walk through each room in your head

picture the knowledge you're trying to remember inside the building

replace bits of knowledge with symbols and images

make markers of where the knowledge is placed on your blueprint of the mind palace.

now close your eyes again and walk through your mind palace and see the symbols of the bits of knowledge scattered throughout you mind palace.

remember the knowledge by walking through the mind palace and remember what each room holds and how each one is connected.

Always picture your mind palace with a certain route of entry and how you end your tour.

This technique can easily be applied to any subject in school. I personally used it for Zoology and how animals are placed in their specific Kingdom/Phylums. This was difficult because there were many subgroups and I usually had 50 plus powerpoint slides, over just one chapter. I constructed my mind palace and built in x amount of doors, depending on how many chapters I had. Each door would be numbered with the corresponding chapter I was studying. The chapter door would reveal the mind palace and all the information inside the room.

Critical Thinking

Sherlock finds crazy solutions to answers out of the smallest details and constructs a conclusion to murders that are baffling. He does this by using critical thinking. Constructing a mind palace takes a lot of work mentally and allows you to explore your imagination. Throughout the Sherlock BBC series, he is in constant silence and thinks in a coma-like state of mind. He is in fact thinking and constructing solutions by abstract methods. Take a box that is wet. A normal person would say, "So?" Or "It is a wet box." A abstract thinking person would want to know the weather during the week, weight of box, object in the box, and more importantly why is it wet." Sherlock is an amazing thinker because he ask the simple question, "Why?".

Critical thinking can be applied to school and favors English, Math, and Science as a whole. The solution to problems are not always logical. An example is the poison used in Romeo and Juliet. You are learning in two subjects by examining the literature and the chemical makeup that makes up the poison. I personally use this to study the MCAT. Taking the time to see vast amounts of information and how they connect can help retain information and act as a faster recall method. This is also extremely helpful on finals, where the information can feel overwhelming.

Speed reading

The most mind blowing talent Sherlock has is how he reads through large volumes of books in a short amount of time. The process of how to speed read is quite easy and the learning process is a breeze. The basics are below:

Pick a book with about 300 pages

A pen

A pencil

And a timer

1. The first timed test is a baseline of how well you read. Start at the first chapter and time yourself for 2 minutes. Read as much as you can in the 2 minute time frame. Count how many words you have read and how many pages completed (make a mark on the last word you read in the book).

2. Now set a timer for 30 seconds and read the same chapter. This time read for speed not comprehension. It should take 1 second per line. Use the pencil as a tracer to follow the sentence and how fast you move through the words (The pencil should guide you through the sentence at a 1 second pace).

3. The next 30 seconds read the first 5 words and the last 5 words in the sentence. Read for speed not comprehension. Continue using the pencil to guide you and keep up the 1 second per line time.

4. Time yourself for 1 minute and read the first 3 words in a sentence and the last 3 words in the sentence. Focus on speed and comprehension. Use the pencil to trace the 1 second pace per sentence.

5. Time yourself for 2 minutes and read the first 4 words and the last 4 words. Focus on speed and comprehension. Use the pencil to trace the 1 second pace per sentence. This time, count how many words and pages you complete. The first 4 words and

Your baseline should increase and you should be able to read faster using this method. This method is designed for allowing your mind to comprehend a sentence and skipping the meaningless parts of the text books. I use speed reading for science based books. I speed read for a general idea of the subject and key points. I speed read through it again for a more detailed look at more complicated subject or more comprehension on a specific subject matter. I slow down on graphs and headers, this allows me to gather a better idea of the source material. This method helps me learn faster and cuts down on wasting my time on reading.

Sherlock uses these methods to construct an interesting outcome to many murders and how they occur. These same methods can be used to better your grades and make school a breeze. Creating a mind palace, critical thinking, and speed reading will give you an edge in school and in life.