When we first arrived today, Toni and Elise were talking about a story Toni had heard on the radio en route to work. It was about a study that tried to prove that humans cannot technically “multi-task.” Apparently, the study said that it is not possible to multi-task, at least by the true definition of the term, but that humans are very good at switching gears quickly from one thing to another. This apparently gives the impression that one is multi-tasking, but in reality they are never focusing on more than one thing at a time.

There’s plenty of multi-tasking going on today at DDA. My desktop currently has 12 open windows, including six Word documents and at least half a dozen browser tabs. Everyone — from our graphic designers to our programmers to our videographers to our animators and search engine optimization specialists — is hard at work today on a wide variety of projects. At DDA, there are always so many things going on that you almost never have a large chunk of time to dedicate to one specific thing. So we’re all multi-taskers, even if some study wants to say we’re not.

A busy day means a day that flies by. And as much as we all love our work here at DDA, we also love Thursdays, because that means the end of a busy week, and a few days to recharge.

And today, Thursday also means Game 2 of the Phillies playoff series with the Brewers, scheduled for tonight at the odd time of 6:07 p.m. (hopefully I won’t get a speeding ticket on the way home). After a HUGE win in Game 1 yesterday, the Phillies must win two of the next four to reach the National League Championship Series. So hopefully, by the time we return to work Monday, the Phils will be four wins away from the World Series.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

Every project we work on here at DDA is interesting in its own way. The programmers may dive into a project because they get to use a new type of code, the video specialists may get excited to try a new piece of equipment, and the copywriters may work on a new script that piques their interest.

In addition to all of our interesting work, we also boast a wide variety of personalities, and all have very different interests outside of work — whether it’s movies, music, video games, sports, shopping, the outdoors, or traveling. Occasionally, we get to combine those two things and work on a project that fits right into our outside-of-work interests.

That happened to me on Tuesday.

As anyone who has read my blog knows, I’m a HUGE sports fan, and spent my pre-DDA career as a newspaper sportswriter.  So when a client came in requesting both a print and website project related to sports I was fortunate enough to be chosen as project coordinator. Now, it’s not that I don’t get excited about other projects, as well, but this one really interested me, especially since one of the clients is a former football player (and one of my favorites when I was a kid). It seems like a great project that should really take off in the future. And I’m really excited to be part of it.

The great thing about handling such a wide variety of clients here at DDA is that there’s a good chance everyone here has been involved in something that mixed work with one of their hobbies or interests. Our programmers, copywriters, search engine optimization specialists, video specialists, animators, and graphic designers all work hard and are great at what they do. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have fun outside the office too, doing whatever may interest us.

So when those two worlds collide it creates a great change of pace.

I’ll admit, I’m not being original today. That’s not my line. It’s belongs to our lead writer, Laura, and it was a light-hearted conclusion to an internal email on Monday (about blogging, ironically). Usually, I wouldn’t blog about internal emails (since they’re top secret, and only the cool kids get to see them), but I think it’ll be OK just this once.

We all got a little laugh out of the line when it showed up in our inboxes, but Elizabeth quickly agreed that it was a great way to describe us.  There may not be many of us (you can meet the DDA team here), but there are many talents and interests around here. And we try to use all of them to create the best results we can for our clients.

Upstairs, the advertising copywriters all love to write (or at least we like being DONE writing, as I pointed out yesterday).  Downstairs, our graphic designers, programmers, videographers, animators, and search engine optimization specialists love designing, programming, videographing (huh?), animating, and, SEO specializing (another huh?), respectively.

Of course, we all have plenty of interests, hobbies, and backgrounds outside the office, as well. And when we get a chance to relate those to our work, it makes the day-to-day work we do here at DDA that much more enjoyable.

But more on that tomorrow…

(I know, suspenseful, right? Pretty cool people are pretty cool like that.)