My #1 Subway productivity exercise.

The Sherlock Holmes Exercise

The obvious thing to learn something new in the subway will be listening to an audio-book or some kind of podcast. And that is absolutely true. However, there are some other useful skills that can be learned and mastered by riding the subway.

As a poker player, I enjoy observing people. Not stalking, mind you! Just observing, noticing patterns.
People clothes, their pose and the way they look around speak volumes to the trained eye. And to train my eye even better I invented this Sherlock Holmes exercise.

The first stage of The Sherlock Holmes exercise sounds like this – take a less than a second look at any person on the train and look to the other side. Then try to reconstruct the person looks and his expression in very small details, as if you are looking for some kind of clues. Make an image of him or her. Then in about 10 minutes take another peek to see if you missed something.

The ideal conclusion will be to draw the person from your memory. (if you can).

The second stage of The Sherlock Holmes exercise is when you can find some clues, or “tells” on the reconstructed person in your brain. Something off-putting, maybe a stain on the closes or some body language things, it could be anything.
Try to understand why these little details exist on a given person, and what they represent.

In time, you will get better at memorizing people and recognizing those tells.

Why it matters?

In the long run, this skill will help you to establish better networking relationships, you have better prediction capability, and it will help you avoid unpleasant situations. This ability helped me avoid trouble countless times during crisis years and it helped me notice when others where in need of help and so on.

Why you described it as a “productivity” exercise?

Because I believe in automation of skills. If your brain can spot the problem instantly and tell you that something is off with a for example business contract, because you noticed something strange in a seller, then you will hesitate to sign it. Thus you will avoid a lot of problems, In comparison, if you need a conscious effort to find something that's off, you will give other people enough time to hide it under the layers of confidence, friendliness, and warm attitude.

In conclusion, we all live in a society made of humans, so maybe it will be productive to learn more about them?

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