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 2572: Shift Shaping

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“Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.“

I read an interesting article that said that “A full 80 percent of people have work schedules that clash with their internal clocks.”  As I thought about it, it made total sense.  I happen to be a natural early riser and when I am forced to do something in the evening that is work-related, it not only bothers me, it also causes me stress and I know I am not at my best.  I have been fortunate to have been able to control and influence when it is that I work, but it’s not always been that way.  I have had to work second and third shifts and I remember how that made me feel; not good.  The article I read went on to describe a company in Germany that decided to just give people the choice and they assigned the night shifts to the night owls and the day shifts to those who rose early and then they studied their productivity.  But they also discovered something else.  They found that the workers were sleeping an extra hour a day because their internal clock was aligned to their work.  More sleep; more productive.  There is a lesson in here for us.  Let’s not just schedule our work to our own preferences, but let’s schedule, best we can, to what works for someone to work their best.  Undoubtedly, it will be more work for us, but in the end, the gains may far outstrip the pain.

Part of our daily preparation is to find our time to be close to God.  We are taught to devote ourselves to prayer and to do so with an alert mind.  Sounds easy, but it isn’t.  To have our mind in a state of alertness we have to be disciplined to get to that state.  That means knowing ourselves, listening to the state of our mind and then responding.  It means maybe shifting our patterns so that when we come to God, we are rested, alert and ready to hear Him.  With some shaping and effort, we can find that our alertness will increase and we will be more ready in Him to do what needs to be done today; to bring glory to God in our work.

Reference:  Colossians 4:2