‘All The Work You Shouldn’t Do’: An interview with Ruby Cline

How do we really make the most of being at university? University is about so much more than studying: the friends we make, the societies we join, and the growth we experience as a person. You may have often wanted to know what a more efficient way of balancing university life looks like – author, journalist, and educational content creator Ruby Cline explores ways to do this in her book All The Work You Shouldn’t Do: How to Succeed at University. She covers topics such as friendships, goals, motivation, study hacks, and more. I recently had the pleasure of talking to her about it.

She said: “So much less of university is about the things that people tell you. So much more of it is about everything else.”

Ruby started making educational TikToks when she was 16. When COVID-19 hit and there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding whether schools would be closed, Ruby had many friends asking her for updates. She was one of the only people in her circle who kept up with the news due to her parents frequently keeping it on in the background of their house. “Other kids don’t have that”, she recognised. This stirred an anger in Ruby at what she now knows is called epistemic injustice – the idea that a person may not be given the tools they need to know something. A desire to make information more accessible to young people is why Ruby started making videos, which also carried on all the way through university, until she was asked to send in a book proposal to Bloomsbury.

Thus, Ruby wrote the book in her third year of university. Ultimately, she believes that students, under no fault of their own, make decisions based on inadequate information. She said: “So much less of university is about the things that people tell you. So much more of it is about everything else.”

Much of the advice in the book explains some of how she managed writing it alongside her studies and other commitments. However, she confessed: “Do not get me wrong; I do not follow all my own advice. In fact, sometimes I was reading bits back and editing them, and [I’d think] ‘wow, that’s really good advice. I should really do that.’”

Ruby asserted that careful planning was essential for the process of writing the book alongside her studies – in ‘Chapter 4: Work smarter’, she includes advice on writing dissertations. She told me that she planned her book at the same time and in the same way as she planned her dissertation. By making a list of how many hard things and how many easy things a task will include – and doing the hard things first – she made busy periods a lot more manageable. By having all the academic research for her book done by March, she was then able to focus on the part about the part about her personal experiences – for Ruby, this part came more intuitively.

Understanding Yourself

In ‘Chapter One: Understand yourself first’, Ruby asks readers to answer a set of questions before they go to university, including values readers hold and points of pride. I asked her what it was that made her realise that these were useful topics for students to be considering.

She assured me that the point of the exercise is not to have the correct answer, but to have an answer to these questions.

She explained: “You can’t move unless you start somewhere, and I think that means that you can look back and see progress.” Everyone will grow whilst they are at university, and it’s important to recognise how you have grown. This is why writing these answers so that you have a concrete document is so important.

One thing that will likely stay the same throughout university is where you feel like you are from

Ruby went on to say that doing this exercise also allows you to see how all the parts about yourself interlink. One thing that will likely stay the same throughout university is where you feel like you are from. If anything, this feeling will get stronger. Ruby is a proud Londoner. But, she said, the reason this fact is important is because of the questions it has cued for her. Living in a city like London has allowed her to meet many people from different backgrounds and experiences. She told me: “When I say I’m proud of being from London, I’m proud of being the kind of person who has been lucky enough to be around a huge range of people and experiences. And I am proud of myself for being the kind of person who […] looks at the problems that other people have, that I don’t, and does something about it.”

University is a place where you can play around with the beliefs you have about yourself, but in order to make the most of it, you need to start by having some kind of answer.

Decision Fatigue

In ‘Chapter 2: Plan to succeed, not to survive’, Ruby talks about combating decision fatigue, which is when a person becomes overwhelmed with all the decisions they face on a daily basis. I asked her how someone would recognise that decision fatigue is something they suffer from. She gave the example of going on a date. If, when the other person chooses where you go and what you do, you feel an overwhelming sense of relief, you need to examine the rest of your life. She said: “It’s nice when people make those choices for you. It shouldn’t feel like it’s saving you.”

Ruby advised putting certain plans in place so that you don’t have to think about them when you get there

Similarly, a lot of students are also lucky enough that when they come home from university for the first time, their families will have a dinner ready. If you tear up at the thought of that decision being made for you, then you manually need to reduce your decision fatigue. Ruby advised putting certain plans in place so that you don’t have to think about them when you get there. For example, pre-choose your breakfasts, outfits, and study spots for a week and see the benefits it has.

The Perfectionist Mindset

In Chapter Two, Ruby also discusses how worthwhile perfectionism is. In lower education, we’re often taught to work as hard as possible, leading to a mindset of perfectionism, which can be damaging at university. In light of this, I asked her what she would tell someone who struggles to break out of this perfectionist mindset without feeling guilty.

The guilt that you feel from not working is also a habit loop – one that you have to work hard at to dissolve

The advice she gave is to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation once – for example, go to that pub evening instead of rereading your essay when you know you’ve already checked it. Force yourself to be in a situation you really enjoy when you feel as though you should be working. The perfectionist mindset – and with it, feeling guilty about not working – is almost like a habit. In a similar vein to the fact that you can’t go from being a smoker to a non-smoker, you also can’t suddenly go from being a perfectionist to not being one. Inch your way down from your expectation of 100% – try sending your essay in when it’s 80% ready.

The guilt that you feel from not working is also a habit loop – one that you have to work hard at to dissolve. She said: “I want to be tentative with how this is phrased […] I think sometimes people are too hard on themselves with their workload, but too soft on themselves with policing their own emotions a little bit.” We’ve been taught that we almost get rewarded for anxiety and guilt, but this reward is sparse and disappears as soon as you leave university. The hard truth is that being a perfectionist in a job interview is irritating.

She told me that the big answer is to contextualise – do this by thinking about everything else going on in your life, which is separate from your work, but still important to your future.

Study Hacks

In the last chapter of her book, Ruby discusses study hacks that she has tried, tested, and reviewed herself. For example, one of the study hacks she talks about is Fika – this is a Swedish ritual which includes having a break in the afternoon to have coffee and cake. I asked her why she chose the study hacks she did.

Ruby told me that a lot of the hacks came from the ability to find a name or technique to something that students discover works for them. This is what happened with Fika – she was able to give language to something that came intuitively. She says: “The problem with having a craving without a name is you kind of can’t act on it and you can’t build boundaries around it […] you cannot test the theory you haven’t written out.”

She says: “True, fulfilled understanding comes from noticing things about yourself.”

Ruby believes that the ‘power hour’ is a particularly important hack for students to know about. This is the idea that you wake up an hour before your usual wake up time and start working immediately for an hour before you start the rest of your day. For example, she found the time in year 10 to do a politics AS level by waking up at 4am daily – although she wouldn’t recommend people go to that extreme!

Finally, I asked Ruby what one thing she would want students to take away from her book. She replied: “None of this is worth anything if you aren’t able to habituate enjoying yourself.” Not every day is going to be great. But even on the bad days, you should be able to have the understanding that it is a bad day amongst good days. If that’s not true, you should be doing everything in your power to change that.

She explained to me that there’s an art to noticing. So much of your life comes down to noticing things: intimacy, success, and friendship. She says: “True, fulfilled understanding comes from noticing things about yourself.”

So, Ruby advised us to try, for one day, to notice the things that are making us feel bad and good. See what a change it makes. Integrate it into your life and do that forever.

All The Work You Shouldn’t Do by Ruby Cline is out now in paperback and audiobook.