Was going deep on Reminders for something I'm writing and finally figured out what Early Reminders actually does

I've been buried in the Reminders app the last couple weeks and kinda fell down a rabbit hole on the Early Reminders thing. Like everywhere you look its explained as just get a heads up before the due date, and that never really sat right with me, felt like there was more to it.

So turns out it's basically a do date vs deadline thing? Due date is when it's actually due, early reminder is when you start the task. Once i started thinking about it that way it made way more sense than just treating it as a second buzz going off.

But the part that actually got me is that the early reminder isn't a fixed date, it's an offset pinned to the due date. Found this out the annoying way lol. Set something due the 20th with the early reminder 3 days before, then later i pushed the due date to the 25th, and the early reminder just moved itself to the 22nd on its own. Didn't stay on the 17th like i thought it would. Makes sense for recurring stuff i guess since the lead time just follows every instance, but yeah threw me off at first.

Also saw a couple people on the apple forums run into the same thing with templates. Like if you duplicate a reminder that has both fields set, edit the due date first then the early reminder, otherwise the recalc thing can overwrite what you just typed in.

Also, the Custom option goes way finer than the menu shows. It stops at 1 month but you can just type in like 10 weeks for some annual renewal, and it works fine.

Anyway, kinda a nothing discovery but it low key changed how i use the app. Anyone else actually lean on this, or am i just late to the party?