This seems like a bit of a non-answer. Ladders used to have seven days, and notifications. That prevented timeouts. You say you’ll send notifications for longer games.
But that doesn’t really help those of us who find the new system hard to stick to (and who generally didn’t have that problem in the past).
Timed out of the ladder again - got an email when I lost a game, but no impending timeout email. Luckily I was on my phone when I received the notification so I logged in quickly enough to flip on vacation before I timed out of the next ladder match (which had 3 minutes on the timer!). The 3 day ladder game timer, unforgiving ladder removal rules and the missing impending timeout email notifications are very painful.