Ed Sheeran was bribed into writing “Shape of You” with Legos

We’ve learned the most useful secret about Ed Sheeran yet! His writing partner revealed that he persuaded Ed Sheeran to focus long enough to write “Shape of You” by giving him — wait for it — a suitcase full of Legos. Although Ed is well documented as a songwriter par excellence, penning tunes for little-known artists like Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Taylor Swift, Naughty Boy, and Lupe Fiasco, apparently getting him to buckle down and focus is no easy task.

We’re not judging, though, since we, like everybody else on earth, have a list of procrastination tools about as long as our to-do list.

Johnny McDaid, Ed Sheeran’s writing partner — and also, fun fact, member of Snow Patrol — explained to the New York Times that he used an unusual approach to get Sheeran focused. Like, carrying around Legos.

"His attention span can be fairly low. One of the things I did to try and keep him in the room when I would be working on a track, I’d have like a suitcase full of Legos I’d pull into the hotel room and say, ‘There you go. You build that.'

Hilarious, right? But McDaid’s tactics definitely paid off. Although originally Sheeran envisioned “Shape of You” as a song for a female group or male-female duet — or, apparently, a potential song for Rihanna — it obviously made it to his own album, and we’re super grateful.

What we find most surprising about this whole thing is it allegedly took them only *ninety minutes*to write and produce the whole song.

Considering it takes us approximately ninety minutes to get out of bed in the morning, it’s safe to say we’re in awe. But maybe the key to getting stuff done is just having Legos on hand at all times? If it works for Sheeran, it’ll probably work for us, too.