I locked myself out of my bedroom a couple years ago.
I tried to pick the lock, but was having very little luck.
Then I took a closer look at the doorframe and noticed that the light from inside the room was shining in the space between the door and the frame: the piece of wood that was supposed to prevent someone from just shoving a credit card in there and releasing the latch either wasn’t wide enough, or the door was just slightly too small for the frame.
So I shoved a credit card in and released the latch. After spending about an hour trying to pick the lock, it was literally a matter of Shove, click, pop and open in under a second.
As relieved as I was, I was like, “Really? I spent an hour at this, and that was the solution?”
I know this. There’s an old joke I like, where the punchline is something like “Knocking the dent out of your car door with one knock: 50¢. Thirty years’ experience in knocking dents out: $199.50.”
I wasn’t complaining, just observing the effect of having £100 disappear with one swift movement. I learnt my lesson, and the next time I locked myself out utilized the aluminium of a beer can for a similar manoeuvre. (It would have been smarter to not lock myself out, but I’m not that smart.)
My partner is a mechanic, and he tells a variation on that story on the reg. Mostly, when someone has spent hours and hours trying to do something it takes him minutes to accomplish. Specifically he tells it when he presents the bill.
One of my art teachers told us a story of… Michelangelo i think? Maybe Da Vinci… where he was on the road traveling and some random guy hounded him for a sketch or portrait. Eventually he relented, whipped up a drawing in seemingly no time and told the guy to pay him his usual fee. The guy balked at the price saying it took him so little time and he told him it was because he’d spent years to be that fast.
