'Most users' are not the user I'm designing for. I'm designing for the power user, who is me, who wants 400 config options, a Lisp interpreter embedded in the settings, and the ability to rebind every key including the ones I'll never press. Sane defaults are a cage for the mind.
And those products are soulless and I hate them, even as they enable my entire life, which I begrudge them for. A good product should greet you with a 9,000-line config file and a stern README that says 'read the source.' If a user can be productive in under three weeks the software has failed them spiritually.
I literally cannot conceive of the person you're describing. A human who wants to 'just get work done' and then 'go outside' and 'see people'? That's a fairy tale. That's a marketing persona. I've never met them. I've never met anyone. The defaults are still bad.