The word "debt" has a couple of unstated meanings to most people. These are things that nobody says out loud because it's not really coherent to the individual but everyone pretty much has the same corner reserved in their head specifically for the weight that true debt carries... if that makes sense.

I think people see "debt" as temporary but at the same time an ever-present, albeit low-level, responsibility. that it deserves a constant trickle of attention.

This is the wrong attitude to have towards technical debt. The avoidance of down-the-line refactoring anything should be as high of a priority as customer service. Keeping code clean, organized and documented allows the developer to deal with bugs and new features quickly. An ounce of prevention, right?

* If users are clamoring for a feature, they will wait another week for it to be built properly. (A well built feature will easily make up for impatient customers by not generating bugs or other problems) * A lot of us have this niggling "gottamovegottamovenotgoodenuf" vibe all the time. But just because you FEEL like you're losing ground doesn't mean you are. And if you ARE losing ground, it's too late for that one thing that's behind schedule to save you anyway... meaning that your problems are likely elsewhere.