Baby Grundy has got into a strange food-related habit recently.

Whenever we serve her a bowl of porridge straight from the stove or hand her a freshly cooked roast potato, Baby Grundy reaches up, grabs her precious cargo, brings it to her mouth and then starts to blow. Three or four blows later, the food is promptly shovelled into her mouth.

You might be wondering what’s so strange about that.

Well, here’s the thing:

Baby Grundy does exactly the same when we give her yoghurt from the fridge or even a slice of mango straight from the freezer!

I guess she’s watched me and Lauren blowing food often enough to clock that whatever food is in front of her, it deserves a few blows. 

So food = blow as far as Baby Grundy’s concerned.

Of course, that’s not how it works. 

Not by a long stretch.

But Baby Grundy isn't the only one who does this.

For instance, how often do we adopt rules about work without ever checking where they came from? Or even if they're true?

I mean rules like "busy equals important", "long hours equals commitment", "a successful week must include some stress", "a stable salary equals security", "optimise your career, not the life it's meant to serve" or "you need to sound like you belong here".

Take that last one for instance.

Just the other day, Lauren and I were chinwagging in Fort Grundy’s kitchen. And while I can't remember what we were nattering about, I do remember telling Lauren that I’d “circle back” to her later.

Lauren’s eyes widened almost instantly as she sputtered “What did you just say!?!”

She'd clocked that I’d slipped into work mode.

Of course, I never meant to use corporate slang like that. And even though Lauren didn’t say another word, the look on her face said it all. She didn’t want Tom the Banker in Fort Grundy’s kitchen. She just wanted Tom.

Anyway, I know these office rules might feel professional and responsible.

They might feel like they’re the only way too.

But most of the time they’re not. And while Baby Grundy will grow out of blowing on ice cold food, workplace rules can linger for decades if we let them.

We don’t have to let them though.

If the rules we’re following at work aren’t working, we can change them.

That’s where my new guide How To Work Your Way comes in.

The guide shows you how to stop following the workplace rules you never agreed to in the first place. These are the rules that shape your working hours, your ambitions, your identity, your take on success and perhaps most importantly of all, who shows up at home when you finally close your laptop.

How To Work Your Way is a collection of interviews I’ve published over the past year with some of the most original thinkers questioning the rules of modern work.

We’re talking about people like Robert Wringham (who founded the Escapology movement), Jenny Wood (whose NYT bestseller Wild Courage flips the usual advice about how to get ahead at work) and Simone Stolzoff (whose book The Good Enough Job takes apart the usual workplace rules one by one).

I’m about to run a bunch of ads in various newsletters to plug How To Work Your Way and find some new subscribers in the process.

But before I do that, I wanted to offer you the chance to pick up the guide right here, right now, for free.

If you feel trapped by the rules at work and you’d like to loosen their grip, I think you’ll love How To Work Your Way.

To grab a copy, just reply to this email with “Work My Way” and I’ll send it straight over.

To fulfilment,

Tom