Now I'm a pretty lazy person and am prepared to work quite hard in order to avoid work.

Why is composing symphonies tough? I don't know. It's just very few people in the world can do it well. And I think that's the case with upfront design. It is very hard to do well.

In almost all cases, I’m opposed to setting aside time for refactoring. In my view refactoring is not an activity you set aside time to do. Refactoring is something you do all the time in little bursts.

I can only think of so many good ideas in a week. Having other people contribute makes my life easier.

One of the things I've been trying to do is look for simpler or rules underpinning good or bad design. I think one of the most valuable rules is avoid duplication. "Once and only once" is the Extreme Programming phrase.

So I hope I’ve made clear that imposing agile methods is a very red flag.

Comparing to another activity is useful if it helps you formulate questions, it's dangerous when you use it to justify answers.