The Courtesy of Enough Notice
Article by Ayman Fouad Abdelgawad
A change of plan can be small for the person making it and large for the person receiving it. The new time occupies a different place in each life.
Giving notice is therefore more than administrative neatness. It allows another person to arrange their obligations with some dignity. They can decide what to move instead of discovering that something has already been moved for them.
Urgency sometimes makes notice impossible. But habitual late notice deserves a different explanation from a genuine emergency.
The courtesy is especially important where one party has much more power to choose. Flexibility should not mean that the less powerful person's arrangements are always the ones expected to bend.
A calendar invitation contains a quiet assumption about whose time can be reorganised. Sending it early enough is one way to make that assumption less one-sided.