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 3K293: Do Not Disturb

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“Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.”

Want to know a place where we treat animals and nature better than people (or maybe there are lots of examples of that actually)? I’ve noticed that where we see “Do Not Disturb” signs posted for sensitive environmental reasons for the growing of plant life or the mating and birth of endangered species’, we tend to take those signs seriously and respect the request.  But, put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on a door, or outside of a cubicle and we will think someone forgot to take down the sign and they won’t mind just a little bit of disturbance.  It’s pretty arrogant of us when we do this and should tell us about who we are taking care of first (ourselves), but we do it.  An informal poll showed that 52% of people keep their phones on “Do Not Disturb” at all times.  I am one of those.  It drives Patti nuts when she attempts to get a hold of me, but in the bigger picture, the amount of focus and relief of stress from always being interrupted is worth the grief I take from her and others ( “He never answers his phone”, they say about me. True).  Call it self-preservation from someone who only has one phone number and could spend 24X7 answering phone calls and texts.  I’m not advocating my way of using “Do Not Disturb (although the data says I am not the outlier that I thought I was), but I can attest that finding “Do Not Disturb” time can be helpful.

Jesus was pretty accessible to His Disciples.  He was with them all the time and even when He was asleep they didn’t resist waking Him up.  However, I do think that He had His limits too when it came to needing His “Do Not Disturb” time.  We are given one of those examples in the Garden of Gethsemane.  In this instance He told them to sit and stay where they were while He went to pray away from them.  He was getting His “Do Not Disturb” time during a very stressful time.  If Jesus needed it, then we need it.  The question is, are we getting enough of it today?

Reference: Matthew 26:36 (New Living Translation)