I got way too comfortable looking at short calls purely in terms of whether the strike was ITM. Now whenever I'm holding a covered call or diagonal I check three things before close.
How much extrinsic value is left, whether theres an ex dividend date coming up and how expensive it would be to close or roll the short call. I still keep an eye on the underlying outside market hours if something is moving, sometimes just with Moon on another tab but I've stopped letting the stock price alone tell me whether assignment risk is getting uncomfortable.
The remaining time value matters way more than I was giving it credit for. Its one of those things that sounds basic after you understand it but I definitely wasnt thinking about it properly when I started selling calls.