Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time tells you when.
Doctor appointments are the worst kind of deadline. They're in the middle of the day, they require specific items you don't use daily, and they have a hard start time with consequences for being late. "Just show up 15 minutes early" ignores the 45 minutes of invisible prep before you get in the car.
Find your insurance card. Fill out the patient portal forms you've been ignoring. Write down the thing you actually want to ask the doctor. Figure out where the office is. Find parking. Sign in 15 minutes early. Each of these feels like "one quick thing" but together they're over an hour of prep that you've budgeted zero minutes for.
Ready Time works backward from your appointment time. The first notification isn't "leave now." It's "find your insurance card and fill out forms." Then: write down your questions, get dressed, load the car. By the time you're driving, the stressful part is already done. You're not sitting in the parking lot filling out forms on your phone.
Most offices ask for 15 minutes early, and 20 to 30 if you're a new patient with intake forms. Treat that as the real deadline. If the appointment is at 3:00, you're planning for 2:45, not 3:00. In Ready Time, set the deadline to the arrive-by time and every step upstream shifts to match.
The other direction has a rule of thumb too: 15 to 30 minutes past your scheduled time. Check in with the front desk at 15 minutes, and if you're past 30 with no explanation, it's reasonable to ask to reschedule. You showed up prepared and on time; that's the half you control. (It's also a good argument for booking the first slot of the morning or the first one after lunch, before the doctor has had time to fall behind.)
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time tells you when.