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 3K370: The Hard Stuff

“So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.”

As we wake this morning and think of what it is that we must get done today, there will be easy stuff and hard stuff on our list of to-dos.  Which will we start with?  I’m sorry to say, but most of us will tackle the easy stuff first with hope that this will “get us going” and give us momentum to challenge ourselves for the hard stuff to come. The sad secret though is that with distractions, taking more time than we thought, burning out, losing focus, etc. the hard stuff on our list ends up on tomorrow’s list, not today’s.  There is something to be said for facing head on the hard stuff first. True momentum will be gained when we know it is all downhill and easy after we’ve conquered the hard stuff first.

It is the same in the areas of our lives that God wants us to clean up.  If we nibble around the edges we might feel like we are accomplishing something good, but it is the hard stuff, the deep, the inner, that God wants us to take Him with us to first tackle and remove.  What is that hard stuff that we hear Him talking to us about today?

Reference: James 1:21 (New Living Translation)