The one thing that isn’t productive about productivity apps is time spent finding them. There are tens of thousands of productivity apps available online each with their own bewildering assortment of features, integrations and pricing. To save you time we’ve shortlisted our top five of the moment. Each one fits our selective criteria – namely, it makes you more productive.

Organise your ideas with Mindmaps!

Mindmeister – https://www.mindmeister.com

Creating Mindmaps using desktop publishing software is cumbersome and time-consuming. Mindmeister is a fully featured, browser based alternative. Using Mindmeister you can quickly create informative Mindmaps to help you organise your projects, tasks and ideas. We particularly love the collaboration feature of Mindmeister which allows you to share your ideas in one click by email to your colleagues or even invite them to contribute themselves.

Supercharge your calendar. (Update 14th July 2016: Recently purchased by Microsoft, it looks like shortly Sunrise will be around no more)

Sunrise – http://sunrise.am

Sunrise is a great calendar app that integrates with your current Google, iCloud or Exchange calendar. What we love about Sunrise is it’s one of the most visually pleasing calendars on the market. But the best thing is Sunrise isn’t just pretty, it’s functional too, it’s even been called the “swiss-army knife” of calendars.

Make creating and remembering secure passwords painless.

LastPass – https://lastpass.com/

The average internet user logs in to twenty-five sites a day. Seventy-three percent of them use the same password for multiple sites. The average password takes just three minutes to crack! LastPass helps you stay secure, generating hard-to-crack passwords with the click of a button and then storing them safely on your device for automatic input. This will save you valuable time spent logging in and remembering passwords.

Stay on track of your tasks with a super-easy To-Do-List.

ToDoIst – https://todoist.com/

There’s an endless list of to-do-list apps available. One of our personal favourites is ToDoIst. The reason why is it has a great balance between aesthetics, functionality and portability. You can use ToDoIst to create comprehensive lists of all your tasks, with the ability to efficiently split up tasks by project! Allowing you to keep “remembering to buy milk” aside from “collating your expenses”. Once you’re setup you can install ToDoList on your phone or tablet and find all your tasks effortlessly synchronised for staying productive on the go!

Find out where your time’s going and quit slacking.

RescueTime – https://www.rescuetime.com

Rescue Time is an amazing free app for figuring out just where your time goes! We’re all guilty of losing focus from time to time and there’s nothing more annoying than getting to the end of the day and finding you’ve only achieved half of what you planned to. RescueTime allows you to reclaim the time you lose mindlessly skimming through Facebook, watching videos on Youtube or scrolling through Twitter. The free version lets you download a small application to your computer which tracks the applications and websites you visit. You can then login to your RescueTime dashboard to get a detailed overview of how you’ve spent your day. Take a little time to figure out where you’re getting distracted, make a few tweaks to how you work and you’ll be more efficient than ever!

It’s a familiar story for many commuters:

You’re on your way to work when you suddenly find yourself lured in to your closest Starbucks, Costa, Café Nero etc. The smell of freshly brewed coffee hooks you in. Your eyes glaze at the sight of a triple chocolate muffin.

You stroll cheerily into the office, grande-ventissimo-roca-origin-espresso-quadruple-caramel-machiatto-with-whipped-cream-and-hazelnut-glaze in hand. Once the sugar and caffeine rush settles, all is well. That is until, you realise how much this daily little treat has really cost you…

Let’s run through a fairly plausible example.

Five days a week on your way to the office you buy a medium latte from Starbucks (£2.60). Two of those days you splash out and grab a Blueberry Muffin (£1.85). Do the math and straight away you’re down £16.70 each week.

Assuming you take your 28 days holiday decaffeinated, that’s a sizeable £774.88 out your pocket every year!

The figure gets even scarier when you consider how much you’ll need to earn to keep up this habit. Assuming in a senior role you’re on £45,000 a year, after national insurance and income tax you’re looking at a take-home pay of around £33,567. That means for every £1 you spend on coffee and muffins, you need to earn £1.34. Factor this in and your habit spirals to £1038.80 a year. That’s over £86 a month!

Ouch! but with a caffeine addiction to feed how on earth can you avoid this?

By drinking the most tax efficient coffee you’ve ever tasted.

How? Here’s the logic:

For serviced office and co-working customers with a Kingsford Business Club membership, unlimited artisan coffee is included! There’s a total of 11 different options to compete with your usual Starbucks masterpiece. We also offer complimentary breakfast muesli and fruit – to get your day of to a great start. Plus, on Fridays join us for a beer or several to celebrate your wins.

It’s all included in the one competitive price, so it’s arguably the most tax efficient way to eat breakfast and drink coffee (and beer).

Interested? If you run your own business – call us on 0131 557 6722.

If you work for someone else – perhaps its time you suggested a change of scene to your boss.

The figures add up, you could be well-caffeinated and over a £1000 better off each year!

If you’re already a customer, chances are you’re on first name terms. If you’re not yet, then it’s likely she’ll be leading your viewing.

We know she’s an expert in property management, but what else makes her tick?

How long have you been working for Kingsford and what do you like most about your job?

I started in February 2015. What I like most is that every day is different. By that I mean I don’t come in every day to do a typical 9-5 job. It’s never boring and also I really like the team.

What is your number one productivity tip?

I use my productivity planner. Designed by Alex Ikonn. It’s a simple sheet that lets me plan my day and most importantly prioritize my tasks.

Does it make you more productive?

Yeah!… sometimes.

Where is your favourite lunch spot in Edinburgh?

Smoke Stack, it’s a café – bar. It does all sorts of food like Fajitas, Steaks etc.

And… your favourite thing on the menu?

Definitely Mac & Cheese. (Overwhelming enthusiasm observed)

What’s the most recent app you’ve downloaded on your phone?

The Chloe Madeley Fitness app. It’s a 15-minute exercise app. It’s quite easy to follow. I’m probably not using it as much as I should, but I’m going to start using it more as I ramp up my fitness.

What’s your next big project with Kingsford?

At the moment I’m focussed on meeting my sales quota. Recently I’ve been working on developing my skills with our sales trainer Iain. I’ve been learning a lot. Now my targets are clear it’s very exciting to get to put my new skills into practice!

Cheers Rachel!

Most entrepreneurs will tell you their most precious asset is time. As after after all – time is money.

Running your own business is far different from the 9-5 grind. Tight schedules, working across different time-zones and that one client who thinks its alright to call you at 2am can mean being an entrepreneur is often a round-the-clock job.

While it can be daunting and stressful, with a few tips you can realise, as Nathan W. Morris puts it:

“It’s not always that we need to do more but rather that we need to focus on less.”

From the office, here’s our top eight:

1. One task at a time. While we’d all like to consider ourselves competent multi-taskers, trying to do several things at once is distracting. Focus on one task – if something pops into your head, take note and come back to it later.

2. Planning, at the start of your day make a list of your tasks, then – order them by importance. With your priorities clear, you’ll be way more productive – trust us.

3. Logout of your social media, without the distraction it’ll be a lot easier to remain on task. If you use it for business, set a specific time of the day to maintain your pages – using scheduled posts on Facebook is a great way to plan your content in the one go.

4. Set time aside for replying to your emails. Jumping in and out of your inbox throughout the day is often time wasted.

5. Before every conversation or call, spend a moment jotting down your aims and objectives. Being clear on what you want to achieve, allows you to get to point faster.

6. Take notes in your conversations. Missing key points just wastes more time further down the line. A few quick notes will ensure clarity and make it easier to get the job right first time.

7. If you can, when you’re working on your most important tasks keep your phone silent and out of sight. Whilst you might not jump to every text or notification, it’s been found that even the faint noise or hum is enough to take your mind off track.

8. Organise your workspace, a clean, clutter-free desk is a desk free from distraction. Keep your most important tools to hand and you’ll fly through your workload.

In short, plan your day, prioritize your tasks and clear distractions. It works. Lastly, remember, it’s ambitious to strike through a full list of tasks each day. Apply the famous 80/20 rule, and don’t fret about the hindering tasks that can wait until tomorrow.

While a day spent co-working at Kingsford Business Club is never dull, there have admittedly been times where we’ve wondered what might happen if we had a boat, or monkeys, or a climbing wall?

Well, here’s three rather unusual co-working spaces that do…

Co-Boat – Co-working on a 30-metre-long boat.

The very first co-working space on the water. Coboat is a new co-working concept combining co-working with a round-the-world sailing trip. Adventurous co-workers can signup for 7, 28 or 365 day trips, with the latter coming in at an eye-watering €45,990.

It’s founders believe the intimacy of the boat is what makes it the ideal collaborative environment.

“With Coboat, we realize our own dream to experience the world by boat, while being more productive, meeting new people and helping them develop their own ideas”

Founder, Karsten Knoor

Oh, and yes there is wi-fi!

https://www.coboat.org

HUBUD – Co-working by a poolside in Bali.

The co-working holiday or co-workation is a growing trend. Fed up with miserable weather dampening their productivity, entrepreneurs are heading to exotic locations around the world to work.

Hubud is in the paradise of Bali and offers all the standard amenities a co-worker might expect such as: fast internet, access to a printer/scanner, meeting room hire and regular monkey visits.

With an average temperature of around 31 degrees and the luxury of swapping brainstorming in the boardroom for brainstorming by the pool it’s no wonder co-working spaces such as HuBud are in demand.

Take a look but be wary of the office envy!

http://www.hubud.org

Brooklyn Boulders – Co-Working Whilst Rock-Climbing

As sedentary office lifestyles continue to make the headlines one co-working space offers an exciting, and healthy, alternative to sitting at your desk all day. Brooklyn Boulders is a stateside co-working space on top of a 120-foot-long and 22-foot-high climbing wall.

If you’re a believer in the “fit body, fit mind” principle then this is the place for you.

http://brooklynboulders.com/somerville/

For a more conventional co-working environment, check out our Dublin Street location in the heart of Edinburgh here, or call us on 0131 557 6722

Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Cisco, Facebook… Kingsford.

These big names pioneered table tennis in the office but The Kingsford Group is getting in on the act. Why? Well, quite simply, it makes perfect business sense.

Amit Kleinberger, CEO of Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt, an international chain with 475 locations, said in a Business Insider interview, “You have to know where your own weaknesses lie and cover those bases. On the flip side, you have to evaluate where your opponents’ weaknesses are and target them. For example, if your opponent tends to be slower at reacting on their left side, that’s where you want to aim. Employing this same strategy in business can be extremely helpful.”

Some advocates argue it is one of the best ways to test your team. At tech start-up, “Technology Advice” each new member of staff is tested with several 11-point rounds of table tennis. CEO Rob Bellenfant says: “the focus is not gauging table tennis prowess but rather how employees approach and respond to elements in the game. For example, are they aggressive, defensive, do they seek to intimidate their opponent or take risks with spin shots? Are they employees that are able to pick up and adapt or not”?

“In ping pong, we have enhanced motor functions, enhanced strategy functions and enhanced long-term memory functions”

Dr Wendy Suzuki

It has other benefits too. Table Tennis comes out on top as one of the only low injury risk sports to be able to increase fitness levels and hand-eye coordination within the confines of the office. Dr Wendy Suzuki, professor of neuroscience and psychology at New York University says: “In ping pong, we have enhanced motor functions, enhanced strategy functions and enhanced long-term memory functions,”

When table tennis originated towards the end of the 19th century in Britain, Victorians would line books along their dining tables as a net, use empty cigar boxes as rackets and make a ball from string or a Champagne cork. You’ll find our offering is a little more refined (minus the Champagne). Check out the customer made table downstairs at 26 Dublin Street.

Welcome to the new home of the Kingsford Office blog – the place where we’ll aim to inform and entertain on a range of topics we hope will add value to your Kingsford experience.

We’ll be trying hard to make our blog relevant to you and your organisation. Expect to find posts tackling ways of maximising productivity, generating leads and creating efficiencies right beside those focusing on the newest, tastiest sandwiches in town, the latest fitness trends and the fund raising efforts of our clients and our team.

We see the blog as more than just a place to get the latest information on what we’re up to. We see it as a thriving hub of activity that we hope will create inspiring conversations that help us innovate and improve.

Finally, we really want to know what you like and what you don’t. So please bookmark this page and find us on Facebook and Twitter where you’ll also find our posts as well as a whole world of other interesting stuff.