Ed Sheeran made a career plan and stuck to it, manifesting his goals in just a few years
The British ‘Shape of You’ musician had very clearly structured objectives and stuck closely to them, leading to the success and wealth he had forecast
Ed Sheeran has announced his sort-of-retirement at the tender age of 28, with a reported net worth of £160m (US$200 million). On stage at Chantry Park in Ipswich in August, the last gig of his two-year Divide world tour, Sheeran said he would be taking an 18-month break from touring – probably to spend time with his new wife, Cherry Seaborn, and do a bit of DIY on their home.
This seems to have been his plan all along. In 2012, when Sheeran’s album + had just spent its fifth week at No 1 and he was well on track to become the megastar that he is today, he told the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis that, no, he was not surprised by his success.
“Because the music I write is like love songs with big hooks, I kind of knew it would end up where it’s ended up if it got the right radio play.”
Sheeran went on to outline his career plan with, in hindsight, unnerving specificity: he wanted to release two more albums, each named after a mathematical symbol, then one of duets with big-name stars. And lo! It has come to pass, with + followed by x, Divide and No 6 Collaborations Project. Even this recent quasi-retirement gels with what Sheeran told Petridis seven years ago, that, after all that success, he would “calm it down a bit”.
Given how many of us vaguely say we’re going to put out a chart-topping album then retreat to Suffolk, it’s easy to see this kind of granular prescience as a sign of destiny and talent that would inevitably out. We are less inclined to attribute it to a work ethic and strategy because of what that says about ours – but what if the secret to success really is making a plan and sticking to it?
