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 107: Weekend Work

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Ever notice how your briefcase is more full on Friday afternoon than any other day of the week? It’s because we all do it; we take home our “weekend work” with us and vow on Friday to set aside some time over the weekend to “catch up” and/or “clean out”. And then somewhere along the way in the weekend amidst seeing friends, being with family, going out, going to church, watching TV, etc. the work gets relegated and pushed back to Sunday night. I am notorious for doing this. I bring home my briefcase stuffed with the “extra” things I am going to get done and then never get to most of it so it gets lugged back into the office on Monday morning. Email even makes it worse as all of the catch up messages are sitting there staring at me all weekend long. I also notice a change in my demeanor as the weekend time gets closer and closer to weekend work time. I feel myself begin to slip back into a higher stress mode and I know my mood changes outwardly as I tune out everything else around me. Even though I ask for permission from my wife to do so, I still end up feeling bad that I am taking away weekend time from her to complete work stuff. I admire those who never bring home their work, but I am pretty sure that I am not alone when I say that I never have found another way. The weekend work and the burden that comes with it can become automatic to us. I often wonder if we don’t just put more and more burdens and troubles on ourselves because we are just built to do so. Achievers just like to take on more. And the more we take on the more burdensome it feels. It may well be that we are taking our troubles and burdens to the wrong place. In Psalm 120:1 we read: “I took my troubles to the Lord; I cried out to Him, and He answered my prayer.” This is where we should be taking our troubles and burdens. What if we were to say that our weekend work was to spend more time in prayer, asking God to take our troubles and burdens and allow Him to work through them? That is what He wants to do and that is what He wants us to do. Don’t get me wrong, God is not going to clean out the email inbox for us, but He can give us the strength, the positive attitude, the peace, and the discernment to figure out how to be more efficient and productive. This weekend instead of doing as we always do, let’s try bringing the troubles to God first and do some crying out and then let Him do his marvelous and wonderful works. Start there first and then begin feeling the load lighten! Have a great weekend!

Reference: Psalm 120:1 (New Living Testament)