Midnight is a Confusing Choice for Scheduling

Midnight is a poor choice for scheduling anything. Midnight belongs to tomorrow. It’s 0000 on the clock, which is the beginning of the next day. That’s not how humans think, though, because tomorrow is after we wake up! A great example is a statement like “proposals are due by midnight on April 15.” What you actually said: proposals aren’t welcome after April 14. What you probably meant: you want the proposals before the date is April 16. There’s a 24 hour difference there, and if you enforce the deadline accurately people are going to complain because they were all thinking the second thing (before April 16). Similarly, this is a problem in change notices and customer communications. When you say …

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