We’re excited to announce an amazing service that let’s you use your voice to directly update your Salesforce accounts and opportunities. Jott for Salesforce is insanely simple to set up and works seamlessly with the Salesforce workflow you have today: no downloading, upgrading, dragging, dropping, cutting, pasting, etc. It’s Jott, and thus works with any phone, and any carrier. It makes the time-consuming task of entering data into your CRM on the go as simple as making a phone call.

As usual, the voice experience on the phone doesn’t mess around: it gets you in and out as quickly as possible so you can get on with your life. If you want, there are easy shortcuts that speed things up even more. Oh, and the voice-to-text transcription is still the best there is. So give it a try today (we’re currently offering a month-long free trial for the service). Whether you’re happy living in Salesforce, or want to minimize your time with it, we think you’ll love this latest addition to the Jott family.

(You might notice that it is more expensive than other Jott services, so we want to get out in front and tell you why that is…)

In the last year, we’ve developed several custom voice-to-text input solutions (including CRM) and have a lot of experience in how they’re used. Because our solutions make complex and tedious inputs almost effortless, they get used a ton…and that makes them a little more expensive to deliver and support (the customer ROI is still amazing). The good news is that if you want to use both Jott Assistant Pro and Jott for Salesforce, you don’t have to buy both. That’s right: when you sign up for Jott for Salesforce, you get Jott Assistant Pro included for free.

If there’s functionality you’d like to see added, please let us know. There’s a LOT more on the way soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks all!

- The Jott Team

PS — If you’re interested in a custom integration for other applications, please let us know.

From time to time we get requests asking for examples of different ways people use Jott. Recently we received one along these lines that was specific to the different types of lists people create. So to get those creative/productivity juices flowing, here are a list of common Jott lists:

To do
Work
Home
Shopping
Groceries
Music
Mileage
Personal
Ideas
Expenses
Books
Movies

I’ve found the Movies, Music and Books lists particularly helpful, though they fall outside the realm of traditional productivity. It’s really nice to not have to struggle to remember the name of that song that came on the radio and I wanted to buy later when I got home.

If there are any ideas you don’t see up there that you think might be helpful for others, let us know!

Women Entrepreneur posted Escaping E-mail Overload this week, taking a look at some ways of managing the onslaught of emails commonly awaiting all of us in our inboxes. This gets interesting when Mark Hurst from Bit Literacy challenges Tim Ferris’s 4 Hour Work Week and David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Ferris rebuked with some interesting points on his blog. Much to his credit, he raises the point that often these systems work in conjunction with each other, helping different people at different parts of their productivity journey. All of this has got me thinking about just how personal organization and productivity systems are. No two file cabinets are alike.

So where in the world of all this do you lie? Are you a Bit Literacy champ, do you only work 4 hours a week, or do you prefer to get things done with lists? No matter the answer, we sure do hope Jott helps with it all (I’m sorry… I just couldn’t resist!)

Today over at The Growing Life there is a great post about productivity articles. It’s good to have a laugh at yourself sometimes and the author does a great job of poking fun at, and raising some valid points about, the GTD world and its recent popularity. Per the post’s advice, I started this off with a picture of someone jumping. Why someone jumping? You’ll have to read the post to find out.

I just found out that I will spend only 1.37% of my life on vacation if I keep up with my current rate of work and vacation time. Frankly, that is a little depressing. They always say that having a balance between work and play is important, and though I never feel deprived for play (I do love my weekends), it’s been a long time since I actually took a vacation.

To cheer myself up, I thought I’d start making a list of all the places I’d like to visit. Then I thought, why not just go ahead and add them to my Jott to-do list? Perhaps it’s not exactly a “to-do”, but it should be, because mental health and productivity is just as important to success (not to mention survival).

Do you consider vacations as important as the rest of your to-do items? Or do they always need to take a back burner to your work and responsibilities? If they don’t belong on a to-do list so they are always kept in mind, how do you ensure you remember to take time for yourself?

Lately I’ve been working on being better about remembering the things I always forget. Trouble with that being that first I have to remember what exactly it is I forget! I’ve been sending myself Jott reminders as these things come to me (so I won’t forget, of course!). Here’s the list so far…

1) Birthdays
Just last year I forgot both my mom and my brother’s birthday. What makes it worse- they share the same one! How you forget two out of your four family members’ birthdays is beyond me, but I somehow managed to do it. (Sorry!) Which reminds me, today is my roommate Alisha’s birthday…

2) Calling people back
You’d think this would be an easy one, but it is never is. For instance, I’m on the west coast but my friends and family live on the east coast. By the time I get out of work they are almost ready for bed, so I always try and call on the weekend. Then things like pinball and movie watching and running get in the way and before you know it, the weekend is over and with it prime time to call my New York entourage.

3) Chores
Forgetfulness of selective memory? One may never know… Either way, I manage to forget about watering the plants almost every weekend. My poor Jade plant is really going to appreciate the Jott reminder I set myself for Saturday.

4) Switching the laundry over from the washer to the dryer.
Maybe this should really go under chores, but the frequency of it in my life warrants a separate entry in this list. This wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t share one washing machine and one dryer with the six other people who live in my building. I always feel bad when I forget to do this, but somehow manage to make it part of my laundry routine.

Since reminders are such a popular feature with Jott, I’m guessing I’m not the only one out there who forgets these types of things. If you’d like to share, we’d love to hear what you forget…if you can remember

If you haven’t read The art of the doable to-do list yet, be sure to give it a good read. One part that really struck a chord with me talks about using specific, active verbs.

When you’re telling yourself to do something, make it an order. An item like “Acme account checkup” doesn’t tell you what has to be done. Make your to-do’s specific actions, like “Phone Rob at Acme re: Q2 sales.” Notice I didn’t use the word “Contact,” I said “Phone.” Contact could mean phone, email, or IM, but if you’re taking out all the thinking and leaving in only action, your verbs will be as specific as possible. Literally imagine yourself instructing a personal assistant on her first day on the job what you need done.

So now just be sure that when you’re Jotting yourself, clear your throat, and posture your voice to intimidate the life out of your imaginary personal assistant and make sure those things get done.

Ok, you’ve gotten all of your tasks done for the day, and your drive home of glory turns stressful when you remember all that stuff your kid needs to do tonight. In comes: You-Do lists.

Step 1
Call Jott (1-877-568-8486) and one by one, rattle off everything you can think of for your kid to do from washing their uniform to brushing their teeth.

Step 2
When you get home, log into jott.com, select your Jotts and click “Print Jotts” to print them out.

Step 3
Hand off your You-Do list to your kid and return your mind to a state of glory.