I update my windows maybe once a year, or once every 2 years or so. I just got too tired of background network activity, and bad windows updates.

I also use my mobile hotspot due to my current living situation, so when gaming, network activity can be detrimental. Now I use simplewall by henry++ [0] to block all network activity (whitelist) - and my god it just works amazingly well. Can't recommend it enough. Easily blocks updates too, and even blocks edge, live.com, and linkedin, which I really don't care for!

[1] https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall