Almost every device and program now asks, sooner or later, to be updated, and the request has a way of arriving when there is no time for it: mid-task, before a meeting, at the end of a long day. Clicking 'remind me later' is effortless and feels harmless, and so the same postponement happens again the next time, and the update sits undone for weeks. It is one of the most common small habits in computing, and it is also one of the more consequential, because a meaningful portion of those updates are not about new features at all - they are about fixing security weaknesses that have been discovered in the software.
The uncomfortable part is what a security update actually represents. When a maker releases one, they are usually acknowledging that a flaw was found - and the existence of the fix effectively announces that the flaw is real and now widely known. Devices that have not yet installed the update are, from that moment, running software with a publicly understood weakness. Attackers pay attention to exactly this: the gap between a fix being released and people actually applying it is a known window of opportunity, and automated attempts to exploit unpatched software are routine. Postponing the update does not keep things as they were; it leaves a known-open door standing while more and more people learn where it is.
The practical answer is to remove the decision from the daily moment of inconvenience, because willpower on a busy day is not a security strategy. Most phones, computers and major applications can install updates automatically, or at least apply them overnight, and turning that on means the protection arrives without anyone having to choose it each time. Where automatic updating is not possible, it helps to set a regular, low-stakes time to check and apply what is waiting, so it becomes a small routine rather than an interruption that always loses to whatever else is happening.
A little judgement still applies. Updates should come from the device or the app's own update mechanism, or the maker's official source - never from a pop-up or an email urging an install through some other link, which is a common disguise for the opposite of an update. And genuinely critical systems are worth a moment's care and a backup before a major change. But the overall balance is clear: the routine annoyance of updating is small and the routine risk of not updating is not, and the safest posture for almost everyone is to let the updates happen promptly rather than pushing them into an indefinite 'later'.