This is an excerpt from the transcript of a class I gave in narrative psychology.

But, if we don’t have any way of measuring when it’s going to happen, then we get nervous if we can’t see progress, because there’s nothing to measure progress by.  So, when we have something we’re waiting for, we want there to be either a timelock or an optionlock which ever happens first, which makes it even better.  Because, if you have timelock, then you are saying all I have to do is count the hours, minutes and seconds until the film is released, and then I will see it, because I know where the screening is going to be.  A Star Trek picture comes out released November 18th or whatever, ….then you say, O.K. well, I’m going to count down until the movie is released and see it.  What an optionlock is, all that has to happen is I have to meet these requirements, and these requirements could be getting pieces to something, or learning something, or whatever it is , but it doesn’t matter how long it takes, it’s when you get all the pieces together and every time you get a new piece, you can see that progress has been made towards the goal.

Read the complete transcript here.