 Sherlock Holmes would be an absolute stat of medical school and one hell of a doctor. In fact, it's said that the character himself is actually inspired by the surgeon Joseph Bell. And with his house-like spidey senses and amazing deduction skills, Sherlock Holmes is one of the key figures when we think of when it comes to a mystery, and as we know, medicine often is one big mystery. So imagine learning how to think like Sherlock Holmes in the process of being a doctor. Here are a few principles that I learned. The show is such a masterpiece and one of my personal favorites, and it got me thinking, what concepts would Sherlock Holmes use in the shoes of a doctor or anyone in healthcare and what type of things can we do if we're on the medical journey. Now principle number one is to create a mind palace. Now in the show, Sherlock, this concept comes over and over again where essentially the main character just stops in one place and essentially looks in his brain and recreates images of where things were in relative to each other and essentially connects ideas between people, events, time, etc. And to illustrate how this idea of a mind palace works, imagine if I gave you a deck of cards absolutely in random order and told you to memorize the entire order in just a few minutes. For somebody who's never done that before, pretty difficult. But for somebody who is considered to be a memory athlete, this is something that they actually do very frequently and actually do multiple decks at a time. So the real question is how are they doing this? How does idea of mind palace work? Now the reason the mind palace works so effectively is that your first step is that you're going to have to create some kind of memorable image. So a king of diamonds could be referring to somebody who's very wealthy. So just talk about Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. We'll just talk about Elon Musk in the study. The diamonds refer to somebody who may be rich, somebody who's very wealthy. So the king of diamonds in our heads is going to represent Elon Musk. And the first place in our palace will just start with our TV. So you can imagine if you had Elon Musk on your TV, that's going to be card number one. Now the next card that I have is just a Joker. So in my head, I'm an interesting image for this Joker may just be a comedian. The first person who comes to my mind happens to be Dave Chappelle. Now I may look behind me and look at my coffee table and say, okay, cool, we have Elon Musk in my TV, Dave Chappelle is going to be sitting on my coffee table. That's card number two. Card number three is going to be the queen of hearts. Maybe we can think of a motherly figure, either our own mothers or somebody that's famous, that is known to be very loving and caring. Maybe you think of Mother Teresa. So whenever you see the queen of hearts, you may think of Mother Teresa. Now we're going to go ahead and essentially just look at my door back there and say maybe at the front door Mother Teresa will be standing there. Now without showing you my cards again, you can easily say the first card was the king of diamonds representing Elon Musk. The second card was going to be Dave Chappelle sitting on my coffee table. And then finally, card number three, going in order at my front door is going to be Mother Teresa with the queen of hearts. Now this is the most basic breakdown of how to use a memory palace, but essentially goes around the idea of focusing on the method of loci or essentially having a place or a few places in your mind. So maybe you're driving to school, you're driving to work, something like your living room like we use for this episode. And then whenever you have to memorize something, finding an interesting image, whether it be a medication that you have to memorize or a concept, a side effect, and then linking them consecutively into your various different objects in your room, and essentially walking mentally from the first thing into your room to the second thing to the next thing. Or if you're using the drive into work, you would talk about the first thing that you would see and maybe a billboard that is next on your list. And you would be putting, you know, Elon Musk or Dave Chappelle depending on what happened in this example. But that is how the memory palace works. That is something that Sherlock Holmes used often in both the stories as well as the shows of basically be able to link complex ideas and memorizing them very quickly and always having them essentially in his back pocket or back brain, I guess, to memorize anything that he needed to come back to. So for example, when I was learning inhalers, two common names that I had to know included Albuterol, which is a short acting and Teotropium, which is a long acting. Now, the first thing I did is for each of those I gave an interesting image. So for example, Albuterol, maybe for some reason remember Abuela in Spanish. And so I just thought of a grandmother using an inhaler because she had asthma. And then Teotropium, just using and going off of the Spanish pipe, I just thought about somebody who's a Tio or an uncle in Spanish in the tropics or a tropium and then put those interesting images of each of those in order in around my apartment. And then whenever I had to memorize all the inhalers, I would simply go through my memory palace and go through my TV, my coffee table, my front door and imagine all those interesting images without trying to cram the information. I still remember exactly where Teotropium was in my old apartment simply because of this process. And while it may seem like a lot of work initially, I promise you some of the benefits in terms of long term retention is definitely worth putting in the time now to create those interesting images and then having a familiar place or a few familiar places that you can always come back to. Principle number two is to understand the power of details. Now, Sherlock Holmes had his amazing ability to have these keen observations and particularly pick out when something wasn't right, especially small bits of details that just didn't make sense. No, no, tinted eyelashes, clear signs of touring around the frown lines, those tired private eyes, then this is underwear. Now, sometimes the small abnormality didn't amount to anything, but did require him to look into why the abnormality was there in the first place and then allowed him to bookmark. Okay, if this small abnormality is there, here are a few possibilities to consider. In medicine, we often do the opposite where things started become routine and start to pay attention a lot less, almost like where you're driving a car and you end up at your destination, but not really sure how you got there in the first place. But if you take a second to focus on details, whether it be a lab abnormality or physical exam finding, it may not ultimately mean very much for that individual patient. And in medicine, when you focus on the details, you'll be able to spot abnormalities. For example, lab abnormalities or physical exam findings that individually may not amount to anything on that patient. But if it led you to have enough curiosity to look in, okay, like why are their liver numbers up? Or why do they have weird nail findings, etc. Then even if it doesn't do anything for that individual patient, at least now you have a list of things that you know, okay, I see a liver abnormality here are a few things I should consider. And for some patients that actually may be worthwhile in knowing. Now, before we get back into today's episode, let's take a quick second to talk about today's sponsor, which is Picmonic. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Picmonic and you're on your medical journey, they have hundreds and hundreds of videos for literally any class or material that you may need. And what makes Picmonic so unique is that in addition to having so many videos on literally any topic you need, so for example, here, we're in microbiology, you can click on any videos. So here's Sapphoreus and their videos themselves are very short. So this video is about a one minute, 54 seconds, but essentially we'll break down the most high yield components that you have to know in the setting about Sapphoreus. And this very nice story format using images. So here's a very nice Oreo cookie that essentially will link an image to your brain on important concept about that. And the future videos, you may find that the same memorable images included in another related video. So then you can link together concepts. For example, here, this venom jar with green represents food poisoning. So any bacteria that may cost food poisoning may have this image in their overall picture and video. So you can say, okay, I know all the different bacterias that have food poisoning. And then whenever you feel comfortable with their relatively short story, you can easily go into the review and quiz phase and actually quiz yourself on the various different high yield components. Now, in addition to having a very unique and easy way to remember information for your quizzes and tests, you can also add all of the videos you're watching into a relative playlist. So if you're setting for a microbiology class, you can go ahead and essentially click all the videos that you add and add it to those playlist. And then whenever it's time, you can come back to your individual playlist and either watch those individual videos again or ask for specific quiz questions related to the videos that you've now said that you've mastered or at least learned the first time. And that's just scratching the surface in terms of features that Picmonic has to help you on your medical journey. Other cool things include having a weakness guide so you can see which topics you're the weakest in as well as their study scheduler. So you can actually say these are the topics I need to know. And here's my test day and then it will essentially will give you a study schedule based off of that. So if you're looking for an all in one resource you're on your medical journey and you haven't quite found it, definitely recommend checking out Picmonic if you're interested. There'll be a link down below. And our friends at Picmonic have also been nice enough to include an extra 20% discount if you use the code the MD journey at checkout. And so if you're interested in learning more about Picmonic, that link will be down below. And as always, thanks to Picmonic for being today's sponsor. Now principle number three is using your identity memory. Now your data memory is his idea of having this photographic memory which is Sherlock Holmes is notoriously known for. Now, while the concept of whether somebody can actually have a photographic memory or develop one through training is debated, but I argue that at some point all of us have some level of photographic memory. So for example, maybe taking a test and saying, I know exactly what page, what section of the syllabus this was on for some odd reason. And I know like that's why I answered the question correctly. We can't do that with everything that we're tested on, but there is some level of photographic memory that we have to some spectrum or degree. And so one of the best things that we can do in medicine is to build off of whatever photographic memory we have and to use connections. One of my favorite techniques to do this is called the brain tub. Now I talk about this in other episodes, but essentially, if I had a blank piece of paper, I want to see how much of a lecture can I create. So after I've sat through a lecture, I've essentially rumored the flow through the syllabus and the lecture presenting it to me of what was covered. Maybe let me just go ahead and give it a shot of seeing how much of that information can I recreate through scribbles and essentially really quickly identifying how much do I remember from my quote photographic memory, and where do I find some kind of gap? Where do I get stumped of not knowing how to go from that piece of information to the next one? That's probably a piece of photographic memory that I'm missing. And if I can just say, okay, cool. If I identify that I'm not able to go from A to B to ultimately get to C, then I can go back to my slide and say, oh, this was with a piece of information. That was the bullet point. Perfect. Now when I take the test, you feel like your photographic memory is actually there. It's almost like trying to memorize an entire puzzle. Well, you may have the overall picture, you may not know the individual colors, orientations of individual places, and when quizzed on it, that may be a gap in your knowledge. But when you're asked about it the second time, that may be something to say, cool, that puzzle piece went this way, it's green and blue. That's exactly what we do with our learning. You have to use connections and repetition to ultimately create your own version of your photographic memory. Now, principle number four is practicing the art of self-learning. Now, regardless of isn't the books, the shows, or the movie played by Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock was always found reading about things outside of his normal comfort of information and knowledge, whether it be things that is a botany of power and ammunition, chemicals, you name it. He was reading those to help him essentially create new knowledge, but also connect to ideas that he had previously to then help make observations and his mind palace be a little bit more fruitful, a little bit more detailed. And in medicine, however, there's this infamous trend where your first two years of medical school, you're learning tons of information, your clinical rotations, you feel stupid because there's so much information that you didn't know you needed to know, but now you do and suddenly you pick it up. And then really at the start of before through your medical school, you're the smartest you've ever been. And then you have a lot of vacation interviews and then you're really dumb. And then when you're a full-time physician or an attending, that knowledge base essentially plateaus out because you're not really seeking out that new knowledge, you're essentially comfortable with where you are. But the whole idea of being a better doctor is to have better knowledge both within medicine. And I argued that in a profession that is meant to be lifelong learning such as medicine, it's important to have knowledge that is growing both inside and also outside of medicine, whether it be reading and listening to podcasts like I do on my way to work through different cases and understanding different pearls that people have about different diseases that I've treated, but also on the flip side making sure that I'm educated on things outside of medicine, whether it be personal finance, investing, astronomy, cooking, nutrition, etc. So then I can feel like I have a whole repertoire of information to rely on whenever that's needed from me. If you enjoyed those principles and how Sherlock would use them on his medical journey and you want more lessons and strategies that I've learned through both my successes and failures, as well as working with hundreds of students over the past six years, go ahead and click down below to get the free access to the med school success handbook. These are my favorite lessons and strategies that have helped me succeed and hopefully can help you do so faster. And while you're down there in the description, you also find links to other free resources as well as our paid programs in case you're interested. If you got any value out of today's episode or if you found it just helpful for entertainment, say go ahead and just show your support and say thank you by hitting their like button down below as well as considering hitting that subscribe and notification bell to be notified when new episodes like this one go out on a weekly basis. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, definitely hit that follow or subscribe on your favorite listening platform and definitely just take a second to go to iTunes and leave an honest review on your thoughts of the show. But as always my friends, hopefully you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did enjoy this episode, check out this episode right here on how Elon Musk would study in medical school as well as this episode right here on how I use Anki in medical school to study like a pro step by step. As always, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully that was a little help to you guys on yours and I'll see you guys in the next one. Take care my friends. Peace.