This one’s a big fuck you to the spork.

For a brief period in the 70’s you were popular. People trusted you. They loved you. Fork & Spoon unemployment rates were through the roof. Meanwhile you were signing seven-figure deals with fast food chains left, right and centre.

The future had arrived.

We’d progressed through all the ages necessary for the collapse of civilisation, and you signalled it’s beginning with your multipurpose goodness. There was a time where I’d have loved you. If anything, I’d have longed for more utility out of my cutlery.

Spifork. Sporknife? Whatever. Just make it do everything. Make it do everything at the cost of performance. That seems to be a theme we’re still running with.

Have you heard about the 5-in-1 breakfast station? This thing is WILD. Questionably coloured coffee – check. Some kind of brioche bun baker compartment – check. Hot plate on the top for frying your beiges and reds – check. A spoon with paprika and breakfast prawns in the background – you bet. The perfect device for your untoasted bread with asparagus and egg breakfast.

This guy is a clear function perve, just cranking out modes and dials. The Swiss army knife of breakfast. A crime for sure. This kind of “innovation” almost always comes at the sacrifice of quality.

I miss the click wheel on my iPod. That tactile thrill of scrolling through torrented music to find an album to listen to start to finish, in the order the artist intended. Jesus take the wheel.

Purists or slightly older people might even consider that too multipurpose. I can only imagine the thrill of going out to a record store to buy music YOU’VE NEVER HEARD before, and giving it your full attention as the wax spins.

The waffle maker at my parents house is another one for me. That thing took up valuable real estate in the cupboards. All it did was make waffles, and it excelled at it. Plug it in, pour in batter, wait, eat. How caveman of us.

It’s not to say that all multipurpose devices do a bad job, our phones have become an extension of ourselves pretty successfully. It holds our memories, notes, friends, photos, music, time, passwords, texts, emails – everything. For better or worse, it works.

But to me, the best products, services & people are focused. They have a singular function, offer or vision and they execute it with complete disregard for everything else.

There’s an amazing clip of WHOOP founder Will Ahmed talking about why their health monitor doesn’t have a screen. He comments that if they had a screen they’d have to have the time, if they had the time they’d be a watch: “next thing you know, all of the resourcing you put into health and fitness, into being the best health and fitness monitor in the world, is now getting divided up into 50 other things you didn’t realise you were building”.

I guess the thread I’m trying to pull at here is that having a singular focus in a product or brand demands more attention from your audience.

It requires a level of willpower and confidence to not look at every shiny object along the way. In saying no to almost everything, you get to say yes to the things that make you best in the world at your thing.

No more half toasted bread or somehow milky filter coffee. The bread goes in a toaster and comes out perfect. The coffee is poured by you and comes out exactly how you like it. The prawns aren’t a breakfast item so you can forget about them and focus on what you actually want for breakfast.