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 2640: Prioritizing

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“No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead…”

How and when do we learn to prioritize?  We have two basic areas to prioritize and that is 1) time and 2) energy.  You might be asking, what about a third, money?  Turns out that we have to spend time to make money.  We also have to expend energy to make and decide what to do with money.  If it does come down to time and energy then we are best if we figure it out early, but that is usually not the case.  Haruki Murakami, the writer and novelist wrote this in his book, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”: “I’m struck by how, except when you’re young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.” Murakami might be one of the small group of people who had the foresight to figure this out while the rest of us chase it for the rest of our lives.  Singular focus can be very powerful and I advise my start-ups and entrepreneurs that when in doubt, err on the side of focusing time and energy on the areas that best move them forward and then ignore the rest.

We know where we are to focus, which is on Christ and our service to Him.  But, I really like what Paul had to say about where to our focus our time and energy.  He said, don’t dwell on the past, which as we know can suck up our time and energy so quickly, but instead we are to focus on what lies ahead and what God will have in store for us. If questioning today where to place time and energy in your work and life, then listen and heed the words of Paul – your time and energy belongs to the future.

Reference: Philippians 3:13 (New Living Translation)