An operating system of a data processing system receives a request from a first process to acquire an exclusive lock for accessing a resource of the data processing system. A second priority of a second process is increased to reduce total execution time. The second process is currently in possession of the exclusive lock for performing a transactional operation with the resource. The second priority was lower than a first priority of the first process. The operating system notifies the second process to indicate that another process is waiting for the exclusive lock to allow the second process to complete or roll back the transactional operation and to release the exclusive lock thereafter.