The story I was once told goes like this: It is known that it took Thomas Alva Edison several attempts to get to a working light bulb, rumor has it that it was more than 1,000!. Some time after he succeeded, Edison was asked how did it feel to have failed so many times to which, according to this story, he replied: "I have never failed. I have had a success of 1,000 steps".
The Japanese approach
On one of his trips to China, the airline managed to get my brother Fede´s luggage lost. The Japanese in charge of one of his offices in China went to pick him up to the airport and they drove to the hotel. A couple of hours later the suitcase arrived and, when my brother tried to open it, he realized it had one of those combination locks.
Puzzled, he phoned his employee´s room and asked if he knew anything about the lock but he too was clueless. So the guy came over to take a look at it and asked Fede what he was planning to do. "I was about to take a shower" was his answer, to which the Japanese replied: "Go ahead, I will take care of this".
Ten minutes later, my brother came out of the shower and, when stepping into the room, realized that the suitcase was open. The combination of the lock was 534. "How did you do it?" was the obvious question. "I tried with 000, moved on to 001, and so on". My brother was amazed: "Wooa you were a bit unlucky"; "No, 534 lucky, 999 unlucky".
Would you have tried to open a combination lock that way? I have to admit it would have never crossed my mind. But thinking about it, 534 tries at 1 second a pop is less than 10 minutes... quite an efficient way to get a suitcase opened.
I loved this story and I baptized it "The Japanese approach". Next time I am faced with a situation like this, I might even consider using it!
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