Fell down a rabbit hole reading about Brownian ratchets. Trying to find a metaphor / mental model for how to harvest useful work out of a brain that randomizes its focus and motivation like an unoptimized pen plotter.

Not encouraging to read that Brownian ratchets are impossible perpetual motion machines. Maybe a better model is a Brownian motor like kinesin? I don't really understand either well enough, so this might not make any sense. Very vague & handwavy in my head about this but it smells right.

My brain isn't entirely random, just not consistently directed. I'd like to find a way to stop trying to self-flagellate into consistency. Instead, I'd like to relax and let it naturally wander & hyperfocus while setting up mechanisms to collate & organize the output in an attempt to simulate externally apparent consistency. (See also: my brain is a chinese room)

This bit of Wikipedia explanation is appealing as metaphor:

The difference between real Brownian motors and fictional Brownian ratchets is that only in Brownian motors is there an input of energy in order to provide the necessary force to hold the motor in place to counteract the thermal noise that try to move the motor in the opposite direction.

Because Brownian motors rely on the random nature of thermal noise to achieve directed motion, they are stochastic in nature, in that they can be analysed statistically but not predicted precisely.

What if the energy I input isn't to resist certain random impulses but instead to capture and organize them into sensible forms?

If successful, I'd have a scenario where I accept that I can't exactly predict when or what I'd produce. But, maybe I can handwave at the probability that I'll produce certain kinds of interesting things with statistical regularity over time.