Lock picking technique

So I've tried this twice now and it's taken me about 5 minutes each time and it feels way too random.
The instructions say "Move the mouse left and right" so am I supposed to wiggle it? .. and the same with the "Up and down".

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but could someone explain how this is supposed to work so I can try and get it down for the future.

You don't need to wiggle the mouse.

The way I do these is to, for each stage (left and right, up and down) to pick a direction and slowly move the mouse in it until either the next stage unlocks or the progress on the current stage resets, in which case I try the other direction.

This has never taken me more than a minute to complete so far.