We had a weekly meeting where we would be badgered about every >1 unresolved ticket and had to come up with an action plan to make sure it never happened again.
So coincidentally, we would "forget" to create a ticket for every issue, that would take more than a day, until it was one day from completion.
It makes some people cringe in horror but once you start doing that it does wonders.
Combining the original "one open ticket" rule with the second approach is rather bad. That's why I hope it was used in the context of the first approach.
Most of the issues, that took more than one day, couldn't realistically be completed in one day. Waiting on other parties, too many issues at once, low priority, etc.
Occasionally, a ticket about something non-urgent, with no follow up from the business users, would get dredged up from the past to finally get worked on again. But I would attribute that to generally cleaning up unresolved ticket, rather than a benefit of the rule.