This is a spooky phenomenon that I cannot explain. Don’t ask me what’s behind it, or how it works.

But you can apparently invoke this to your advantage, almost at will.

Let’s say your workload starts to slow down. Or you want to expand your stable of true fans. Or maybe you’re just itching for fresh faces and different work.

So you start to reach out more. Instead of waiting, you begin pursuing.

You contact a few companies you’d like to work with. You call people you haven’t spoken to in a while. You send ideas to your clients to plant the seeds for new assignments. You hustle.

And after a few days of this, or maybe a week, or even two weeks, lo and behold, new stuff happens.

New work shows up.  New clients ask about a project or two. Inquiries land in your inbox. The pot begins to bubble again.

But here’s the odd part: none of the new stuff comes from the people or projects you were chasing.  None of it.

It comes from unexpected quarters. From a guy who had worked in the cubicle next to you ages ago, who has moved to a new company and needs work done.

Or from someone who stumbled across your web site a month ago and has been meaning to call you.  Or a client is referred to you by a person you don’t even know.

You beat the bushes, and new opportunities fly out. But not from the bushes you’re beating.

It’s almost as if, by diligently and earnestly doing the right thing, you somehow trigger random events in your favor, now.

This sounds so goofy, I’m reluctant to bring it up. Except I have experienced this dozens of times.  And I’ve heard the exact same story from a freelance information architect, a freelance composer, freelance project manager, many freelance designers and writers, and even a guy who sells concrete.

They don’t know why this works, either. But there it is.

Oh, and as we have all discovered, you can’t game the system.  It doesn’t work to copy and paste some lame emails or make half-assed calls for an afternoon, hoping to be mysteriously graced with work from on high. You must pursue in earnest.

If you have an explanation for this, I’d like to hear it.  (And no, that woo about the theory of attraction isn’t an explanation.)

Meanwhile, go do.