My family
I’m a husband to Elisha and a dad to Daisy, Wes, and A.J. We live in Morgantown, West Virginia, and what we do best is share experiences. The pictures below are a fair sample: the five of us, out doing something together.
Everything I make—the productivity systems, the music, the writing—starts from one conviction: my work should serve my life, not compete with it. I don’t always live up to that. Which is exactly why I build systems: so the gap between what I believe and how I actually spend my days keeps getting smaller.
Productivity
Doing the right work, the right way
Most productivity systems put structure first: get organized, and then you’re allowed to work. Action-Powered Productivity flips that. Take action, and let the structure grow out of what the work teaches you. Then your actions reveal the roles you play, and the roles you play—and the ones you aspire to—guide what you act on next. The right work, done the right way.
None of this was invented in a book. It was earned one tool at a time:
Todoist
Learned that capturing everything beats remembering anything.
Roam Research
Learned that notes want to be a network, not a filing cabinet.
Tana
Learned—and taught, as a Tana Ambassador—that structure should grow out of the work you actually do.
Claude & HQ
Today I collaborate with Claude inside my own files—tasks, projects, calendar, people. That’s HQ for Action. We run on two questions: What am I doing that my AI should be doing? And what are we doing that would be easier with scripts helping us?
The current work is attention. You only have so much, and intention becomes action only when it receives attention—so I design systems that ask less of mine. With AI I design for its version of the same bottleneck, reasoning, and spare both. That thinking is becoming my next book, Solve For Now—the weekly newsletter starts soon at solvefornow.com. My first book, The Rhythms of Productivity, is proof I’ve been at this a while.
Music & writing
Composer, conductor, pianist, singer
Music is my first profession: degrees in composition and conducting, hundreds of musical theatre productions music-directed, and commissions performed across America and Europe—including the incidental music for the Chicago premiere of Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo. Golden Horseshoe, my musical about West Virginia history, still tours the state; Five Appalachian Songs sets mountain melodies for soprano and piano.
Catalog & commissions at music.rjnestor.com → (under construction)
The writing has always been tangled up with the music—I wrote the book of my musicals, not just the notes—and it spills past it: a dozen co-written screenplays, and Time Worn, a novel in progress that starts from West Virginia’s ghost folklore and takes it somewhere all its own.
Speaking
Talks I’d love to bring to your people
I speak about using AI like it matters—your privacy, your ethics, and your creativity intact. If your conference, company, church, or arts organization is wrestling with what AI should mean for you, one of these is probably yours:
The HQ Philosophy of Implementing AI
An AI that works inside your own files and context—an administrator that already knows your work—instead of a blank chat window.
Book this talk →AI with Guardrails, for Churches & Organizations
Adopting AI in institutions that rightly move carefully: privacy, ethics, and efficiency by design.
Book this talk →Efficient AI Is Ethical AI
Use AI where it’s most valuable and nowhere else—better for your work, your people, and the planet.
Book this talk →Use AI Now to Use It Less Later
Let AI’s coding and pattern-recognition strengths build the infrastructure that makes your future work easier—with or without AI.
Book this talk →AI Planning for Church Music Directors
Planning tools that enhance a music director’s own process instead of replacing it.
Book this talk →Contact
Reasons people write to me
Productivity consulting
One-on-one work building a system fitted to your actual life.
Start a conversation →Commissions & arrangements
New music for your ensemble, from a hymn setting to a full orchestration.
Ask about a piece →