Let a Thing Be a Thing

It was my second day in France, and I woke early. I was hungry and needed coffee. I was meeting friends who lived in Paris, and I couldn’t wait for breakfast. Breakfast is one of my favorite meals to eat in a restaurant. I love eggs, breakfast meats, and things from the griddle. I was ready for some real French cuisine.

My friends arrived, excited for the day. They had a plan: the Louvre, a walk by the river, street theater, but first, breakfast. Music to my ears. They took me to a small riverside café and ordered for me. I must eat like the French while I am here, they said, and I agreed.

I didn’t even look at the menu. I trusted my hosts. The coffee came in a bowl. A bowl of coffee. I thought I was in heaven.

Then breakfast arrived. A tartine.

For those who haven’t been to France, the traditional French breakfast is coffee or café au lait and tartines. A baguette, sliced lengthwise, slathered with butter and jam. That’s it. No sausage. No meat lover’s omelet. No Belgian waffles with whipped cream and fruit. Not even an egg white omelet with shallots. Just coffee and bread.

I will admit that I am the textbook definition of the ugly American. I am ugly, I am fat, and I like what I like. What, France, you think you’re better than me? My body was not thrilled with the repast I was being offered. Where was the short stack of pancakes, the omelet larger than the plate, and stuffed with everything? The cheese, the bacon, the side of sausage? Where was breakfast?

I smiled as my hosts broke the bread, spread on the butter on it, and added dollops of jam. I followed suit, silently wishing for a breakfast burrito and country gravy. Instead, I got a baguette, butter, and jam. It was uncomplicated. And it was good.

The sweet, creamy butter under the bright, fresh jam. The crust cracked away to reveal a soft, warm center that held everything together. With the café au lait, the street traffic, and the morning light, it felt complete. I had energy from the bread and sweetness from the jam. I wasn’t bloated or making old man noises as I stood up. I was satisfied.

Great bread. Fresh butter. Fruit jam. A bowl of coffee. That was breakfast.

For the rest of my time bounding around Europe, that’s what I had each morning. Coffee and tartines. Nothing else. When I returned home, I was so taken with the experience that I made it my breakfast there as well. For a full year, I skipped the meat lover’s omelet and the short stack with sausage and syrup. Just warm bread, butter, and jam.

But over time, I drifted back. It got harder to keep that kind of breakfast going. Most places didn’t have baguettes, and the jam came in those small plastic squares. Smooth. Dyed. Nothing like the fruit pictured on the peel-back cover. No one seemed to take the bread seriously. In France, the baguette was warm and crusty. Back home, it was a dinner roll or a sub roll. It wasn’t the same.

And always the question: would you like something else with that?

A baguette was not considered breakfast. Just bread, butter, and jam? We have a buffet with over a thousand offerings. I understand that. I just want something simple.

Why is it that when we have something straightforward, someone feels the need to improve it by adding more? More gadgets. More add-ons. More geegaws. More connections. More cheese. Why is it always more? Why can’t a thing just do a thing and leave it at that?

This isn’t an anti-American screed. It’s an observation. Simple doesn’t seem to fit into our lives anymore. Everything has to be bigger, better, supersized.

It makes me think about brands. How do brands get back to simple? Is it even possible? Or are we all condemned to simple adjacent, simple with a side of something extra?

When Did “Enough” Start to Feel Like Failure?

When did “enough” start to feel like we were cutting corners? Somewhere along the way, a thing that simply does what it promises began to look unfinished. A phone that makes calls isn’t impressive anymore. It needs cameras, ports, features, and updates. A breakfast that fills you and tastes good isn’t indulgent enough. It needs sides. It needs upgrades. It needs options.

We’ve been trained to equate more with value. More features. More choices. More customization. More volume. If something is restrained, we assume something is missing. We lean in and ask, “Is that all?” But sometimes nothing is missing.

Sometimes the bread is just bread. It’s warm, crusty, and made well. It doesn’t need to arrive buried under syrup or stacked beside three kinds of meat to justify its existence. It does what it was meant to do. And yet we get suspicious of that. We assume restraint is a sign of limitation instead of intention.

Maybe we’ve confused generosity with abundance. If a restaurant offers a buffet with a thousand options, we feel cared for. If a product page lists dozens of capabilities, we feel reassured. If something is spare, we assume it must be lacking. But 'enough' is not the same as 'lacking'. Enough is a decision.

The problem is that sufficiency doesn’t market itself loudly. It doesn’t wave or shout or offer a bonus feature for thirty-nine cents more. It just sits there, doing its job. And that can feel almost radical.

When I graduated from grad school, a close friend gave me a beautiful pen. I loved it immediately. I love writing pen to page before sitting at the keys, and this one had weight to it. The color was deep and quiet. The cap clicked tight with a clean sound. The line was smooth and steady. I loved it so much that it still sits on my desk, getting a workout every single day.

When I showed this pen to others, they all asked some variation of the same question. “Oh, a pen. What does it do?” What does it do? It writes.

That wasn’t enough. Being a lovely pen wasn’t sufficient. It had to record audio. It had to sync to something. It had to translate, store, transmit, and connect. A pen that simply writes felt incomplete. But I don’t need it to do anything else. I need it to write well. I need it to feel good in my hand. I need it to last. That’s enough.

When Brands Forget What They Are

If we treat breakfast this way and we treat a pen this way, it’s no surprise we treat brands the same.

Most brands don’t begin as complicated machines. They begin with a clear idea. A product that solves a problem. A service that fills a gap. A promise that makes sense. Early on, there’s usually clarity. This is what we do. This is who it’s for. This is why it matters. The idea is visible and easy to hold.

Then time passes. Competitors introduce new features. Customers ask for more. Sales teams want additional proof points. Marketing wants stronger claims. Leadership wants growth. None of that is irrational. In fact, each request feels reasonable on its own. So the brand expands. It adds functionality, messaging, tiers, integrations, and explanations. It grows in capability and in language.

Over time, the original idea doesn’t disappear; it just becomes harder to see. The brand that once did one thing well is now trying to demonstrate that it can do everything well. When someone asks what it does, the answer takes longer. It’s more detailed. It’s more impressive. It’s also less clear.

This usually happens in the name of value. We want to show how much we can do. We want to prove we’re worth the price. We don’t want to look small. But in trying not to look small, we sometimes lose the sharpness that made us distinct in the first place.

Simplicity Is Not Small

There’s a quiet assumption underneath all of this that simple means small. If something only does one thing, we assume it must not be very powerful. If a brand has a narrow focus, we assume it lacks ambition. If a product resists adding features, we assume it’s behind the times. We’ve gotten used to equating expansion with progress, as if growth could be measured only by additions.

But a tartine isn’t small because it lacks sausage or whipped cream. It’s complete because it doesn’t need them. A pen that writes beautifully is not outdated because it doesn’t connect to the cloud. It is doing the job it was designed to do, and doing it well. There is a kind of confidence in that restraint, a refusal to chase every possible extension just because it exists.

Simplicity is not the absence of capability. It’s the result of intention. Someone has to decide what the thing is, and just as importantly, what it is not. That second decision is the harder one. It means leaving good ideas on the table. It means saying no to features that might impress but don’t strengthen the core. It means trusting that clarity will carry more weight than abundance.

For brands, that kind of restraint can feel risky. It can feel like narrowing your field or shrinking your promise. But often the opposite is true. When a brand is disciplined about what it does and does not do, it becomes easier to understand and easier to remember. The edges are sharper. The idea is cleaner. It stands on its own without needing a side of something extra.

Simple is not a shortcut. It is a choice.

Trying Simple Again

I still think about that breakfast. Not because it was dramatic or exotic, but because it worked. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. It fed me. It tasted good. It didn’t overwhelm the morning. It didn’t try to impress me. It just showed up, did its job, and got out of the way.

What made it powerful wasn’t scarcity. It wasn’t deprivation. It was focus. The bread was good. The butter was good. The jam was good. Nothing was trying to compensate for anything else. There was no performance to it. It felt intentional.

I don’t romanticize France, and I’m not pretending that all things European are superior. I drifted back for a reason. Simplicity can be inconvenient. It requires care. It requires saying no to easy additions. It requires tolerating the feeling that you might be missing out on something bigger. That feeling is the hard part.

Whether it’s breakfast or branding, when you choose to keep something clean, you have to sit with the discomfort that you could have added more. You could have expanded. You could have layered in extra features, stronger claims, or louder messaging. You could have built the buffet.

Trying simple again doesn’t mean stripping everything down to nothing. It means asking what actually matters and defending it. It means letting a thing be what it is without apologizing for what it isn’t.

A brand that does one thing exceptionally well is not underpowered. A product that resists feature creep is not incomplete. A message that says exactly what it means without decoration is not unsophisticated. It is enough. And sometimes, enough is what makes it memorable.

The Takeaway

Simple is harder than it looks. It’s easy to add. It’s easy to expand. It’s easy to build the buffet and point to abundance as proof of value. What’s harder is deciding what the thing is and allowing that to be sufficient.

That French breakfast didn’t win me over because it was minimal. It won me over because it was intentional. Nothing was accidental. Nothing was compensating for anything else. It was complete without being crowded.

Brands face the same choice. They can continue layering on features, messaging, claims, and add-ons in the hope that more will feel like better. Or they can pause and ask a quieter question: what are we actually here to do, and are we brave enough to let that be enough?

At ThoughtLab, we believe clarity is not reduction for its own sake. It’s discipline. It’s confidence. It’s the willingness to defend the core idea rather than bury it under geegaws. When a brand is clear about what it is and what it is not, it stands taller, not smaller.

You don’t have to overhaul everything tomorrow. You don’t have to throw out the buffet. But you can look at what you’ve built and ask whether every addition strengthens the core or simply makes it louder.

Sometimes the most radical move is restraint. Sometimes it’s a bowl of coffee, good bread, fresh butter, and jam. And sometimes, that’s enough.