Why version drift turns into an emergency
Skipping a minor release rarely causes visible harm on its own — the store still runs fine. The problem compounds: three skipped minors becomes a major version gap, plugin vendors drop support for your version, and eventually a security patch simply isn't available for the version you're stuck on.
That's usually the moment an upgrade stops being routine maintenance and becomes an urgent, higher-risk project done under pressure. Staying closer to current, even a version or two behind, keeps each individual upgrade smaller and lower-risk than catching up all at once later.
