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 3K357: Distracted Attention

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“My child, pay attention to what I say. Listen carefully to my words.”

We have come to accept “Distracted Attention” as being “enough” to get by and the more we accept it the worse it is going to become.  We all know distracted attention as we all have/will done/do it within this week.  This is that moment when we are supposedly listening to and with someone (IRL or virtually) but our mind is someplace else all together.  It might the physical device in our hand or in front of us that distracts us or it could be that the conversation, text or email right before the meeting has taken us over and we can’t concentrate or think of anything else. Or, it must might be that we just don’t want to be in this meeting, conversation, lecture, etc. and we have decided to tune out.  Distracted attention is not any good for anyone and it is a productivity killer, not to mention an energy and time waster for the person who thinks they are getting our full attention, which turns into us being totally rude to them.  Distracted attention is a choice.  We don’t have to be distracted if we don’t want to be.  I’d make the case that we all would benefit from a lot less of it going on and better off with a lot less people getting away with it as if it is acceptable.

Who calls us out when we give God our distracted attention?  Maybe not anyone, but that stirring inside of us that we should be paying more attention to our spiritual health could be the Holy Spirit trying to get through to us. If we can’t give God, for some part of each day, our undivided attention, even for a few minutes, then how is it that we think we can do so for others in our lives?  Our practicing undivided attention with Him will only help us be less distracted with others. Let’s focus in and give it a try today.

Reference: Proverbs 4:20 (New Living Translation)