I used to generally update version after version, but recently, I have not seen a good enough reason to switch from 16.04 to 16.10 (I intend to stick to 16.04 till the next LTS version is released).
[1]: https://xubuntu.org/news/xubuntu-16-10-release/
[2]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuGNOME
[3]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/FinalRelease/Xubuntu
This would be a model where specifically designated software is always kept up to the latest versions (primarily for : ssh, openssl, browsers.
Why ssh and openssl? Security patches are backported.
For other specific applications, I use PPAs.
Unfortunaly it's impossible to deliver unless you pay people to do the work or do it yourself.