No phone

Ed Sheeran hasn’t used a phone since 2015. He’d kept the same number since he was a teenager, and by the time he was famous, he was receiving thousands of texts a day. It got in the way of being present, so he cut it. Now he has an iPad, spends about an hour a week replying to email, and that’s it. He’s often shared an example of how this has changed his life. He’s at dinner with his wife, and she gets up to go to the bathroom. Anyone in his position would reach for the phone and start scrolling. Ed just sits there. And it’s in that quiet, doing nothing, that his best lyrics and melodies tend to arrive. What I love about this is how clear he is on what actually matters. Being a social media sensation does nothing for him if he isn’t making great music. And if the music is the point, then the job is to build a life with the conditions for it. For Ed, that means doing the one thing few, if any, celebrities, will do. He turns off the phone.