Unfortunatly it was that weird type of lazy that ends up being more work and stress in the end as well.
"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."
Xanadu's vision was perhaps even more ambitious than it was transformative, with the promise of production code always pushed further out of reach as project goalposts moved again and again.
UNIX was perhaps the lazy vision, but it was also an extremely pragmatic one. Project goalposts were firmly planted, and production code proliferated early even during the design process.
I think the moral here isn't that we should be lazy, but that we have to temper our ambition with enough practicality to ensure great ideas don't end up as only mental masturbation for a few cultured types.