What is deferred updates?

Deferred updates is a concept in personal epistemology: Knowing a schema is wrong but not updating it creates a growing liability.

Example: Your mental model of your team's codebase was accurate two years ago. Since then, three services were rewritten, the data layer moved to a new provider, and the auth system was replaced. You still make architectural suggestions based on the old map. Each suggestion wastes 30 minutes of meeting time while someone explains why that won't work anymore. Two years of deferred schema updates have turned you into a drag on the team you're trying to lead.

This concept is part of Phase 16 (Schema Evolution) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for schema evolution.