Bad Habits

Listening to Ed Sheeran’s new song reminded me of James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits”.

James offers advice to help with fostering desired habits. He describes a method of stacking habits so that certain behaviours follow others without us even having to think about it.

The song “Bad Habits” provides a good example of how this works too, although in this case the stacking is for behaviours described as bad habits.

In my interpretation of the lyrics, going out late brings the character in the song to pubs/clubs where autopilot associations lead him to vices that he knows are bad for him.

The book offers advice on how adopting tiny behaviour changes can lead to greater success and break bad habits.

So cool bat-like character in Ed Sheeran’s new video, if you’re reading this, I recommend you stop and instead invest your time in reading James Clear’s book.

James Clear, if you’re reading this, I recommend you check out the song, it’s lyrics, tune and video are all great.

And Ed Sheeran, if you’re reading this, I think it’s genius that your song implies its unlikely that we’ll break our habits but yet in creating this song you’ve deviated from your usual style and so you’ve inspired us that it is possible to change our patterns.

Feature Image Credit: Manan Chhabra via Unsplash