A countdown on the Lock Screen for the next thing
Between knowing an event is at three and knowing you have eleven minutes there is a large practical difference, and only one of them changes what you do next.
What most people assume
That a notification a few minutes before is enough.
A time is not a duration
Reading three o'clock makes you do arithmetic against a clock you have to find. Reading eleven minutes does not. The second one is actionable and the first is a lookup.
This matters most in the twenty minutes before something, which is exactly when people misjudge it.
Why it lives on the Lock Screen
The countdown updates in place, so glancing at the phone is enough. There is no app to open and no notification to dismiss, and the information is correct every time you look rather than correct once when it fired.
A single alert five minutes before tells you the same thing once and then stops helping.
What it looks like
What to do
- Rely on the countdown for the last half-hour and on alerts for the day before.
- If you routinely leave late, watch the number rather than setting an earlier alert — the alert is easy to dismiss and the number is not.