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 2774: Easily Distracted

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When the people saw how long it was taking Moses to come back down the mountain, they gathered around Aaron. “Come on,” they said, “make us some gods who can lead us. We don’t know what happened to this fellow Moses, who brought us here from the land of Egypt.”

We are, by human nature, easily distracted.  We also seem to forget what we know if it is not right in front of us to remind us.  We use the adage, “out of sight, out of mind” because it is true. During these next few weeks as we work from home or places where we are not around our co-workers, nor our boss, we are going to need to really double down on our focus to be sure that we remain on task and on-purpose.  None of this is easy, but it is necessary and so needs to be how we spend out time throughout the day. Start today intentionally knowing what needs to get done and stick with it until it is done.  That sense of accomplishment will be rewarding.

Moses goes up to the mountain and we are told that because he didn’t come back down right away, the Israelites quickly turned to Aaron and wanted some other gods to worship.  We are so easily distracted that like other things, if God is not right in front of us (in either our deep times of need or high times of blessing) we start wanting other things to worship. I cannot think of another time in my lifetime when it is more important to individually and collectively keep our focus on Christ than right now.  What is there to distract us from Him is fueled with fear, anxiety and stress.  But we know if we keep our focus on Him, those distractions will be lessened and He will take them from us.

Reference: Exodus 32:11 (New Living Translation)