In my experience there are two types of designers: Type 1 is basically a level designer with some design insights, but generally isn’t good with mechanical/abstract systems (and usually can’t script or code). Type 2 is more of a “game designer” and understands abstract systems, mechanics, flows etc.
It really depends what you want to be. But it sounds to me like “I can’t be arsed learning to learn how to really design, so can I skip the hard work and just wing it?”. The truth is that you CAN wing it, but then you’ll find it incredibly hard to produce consistantly good designs (and as importantly throw away bad ones).
The best designers I’ve worked with have been incredibly well read, have been either great “systems” designers or great aesthetic designers, both being valuable. Take guys like Dan Cook and Stephane Bura and look at the things they’ve written about. Most books I’ve read on game design have been pretty useless to be fair, but you simply can’t get around the fact that to be a great designer you need to skilled in lots of areas and able to distill ideas into abstract concepts, then to flesh out those abstractions into practical designs. So finding the best books on game design is a start, then supplement those with other design areas, architecture, philosophy, maths, artificial intelligence, writing, cinematography, economics etc.
I guess what I’m saying is that you’re question has completely the wrong tone if you actually want to be a great “designer” and not just some dude who maybe occasionally makes a half-decent game. Put the effort in to get the reward and all that.