Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2014: Sparks of Joy

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“Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy.

Patti and I are cleaning out the house and making hard decisions on what to keep and what to not keep.  The first inclination is to keep everything, with the thought that someday we might need it or want to use it.  But, you can’t reduce and simplify that way.  There must be a filter.  As I was explaining the dilemma to someone who has recently gone through the same exercise, she said that she and her husband decided that if an item didn’t “spark joy” that it was time for it to go.  I was fascinated with this thought and began applying it to stuff around the house and sure enough, you find somethings do spark joy and others just don’t.  It’s making decisions easier already.  What if we applied that same principle to how we view what we should be working on or not?  Surely, not all things we need to do (because they are assigned to us by someone else) will spark joy?  Or maybe they will.  You see, in our work we don’t always get the chance to pick and choose what we need to do, but we can certainly find choose to find joy in the fact that we are working hard and at our best on whatever we do.  And, when we do get to choose, we can look for that spark of joy before we decide to take on something new.

All the other things we do in life also need to spark joy or we shouldn’t be doing them.  One of the challenges that we have in our faith walk is that more will come at us and fill our lives than we can handle and we must make choices on what we do with our time.  God has given us many choices in what we watch, read, listen and digest into our mind and body.  What if we filtered those through what sparks joy?  You see, true joy is what comes when we are in the presence of God’s gifts.  It’s why a baby or puppy that are innocent can bring us so much joy.  Let’s not confuse happiness or temporary pleasure with joy and let us be able today to discern the difference and also recognize and be grateful for the sparks of joy in our lives.

Reference:  John 17:13 (New Living Translation)