How to display date time for recently passed and dates and upcoming dates?

I was going through some information in an application and found myself frustrated by an inability to find the information I needed.

This happened because the only information that was listed was the date in a YYYY-MM-DD format.

I associated the information with days of the week, or "today" or "yesterday", rather than numbers. I could have found this information more quickly if I could associate date numbers with the days of the week, as I knew when I did them, but not the number of which day it was on the calendar (Friday vs the 8th). Was this typical of me? Has this been looked into?

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So the question is:

For things that have happened recently, or are going to happen soon, is it best practice to include the day of the week assuming the individual can remember things that have occurred or are about to? Is there a best practice? Do you think it is correct, or is it more intuitive to think of passed days as days of the week? Or should the day of the week always be included?

Are there studies or best practices that show which piece of information in dates are thought of or sought first when seeking past or upcoming information? How long ago or how soon these events occurred shape which language should be used?

Thanks!