"Nobel laureates are 22 times more likely to have hobbies compared to their peers"

So that's the hold up.
From Stew Fortier:

Hobbies are not distractions

I used to think that people who had lots of hobbies were unfocused and “scattered.”

If somebody had too long of an answer to the “what do you enjoy doing outside of work?” interview question, I’d assume that they were not serious about their career.

Geeze buddy, between all these different activities where do you find the time to… uh…. do your job?

But, thankfully, I’ve become slightly less of a judgemental prick and have refined my opinion.

In my own case, I have two “real” hobbies: reading and writing.

I used to feel guilty about how much time I spend doing both each week because the stuff I read and write about often appears to be unrelated to my day job.

But now enough time has passed for me to connect the dots and see how each hobby has directly helped me in my career.

Reading has exposed me to a wide range of ideas that, almost by accident, end up inspiring new solutions for problems at work.

For example, I once stumbled across an obscure paper in Nature on how hunter-gatherers valued storytelling skills over hunting and gathering skills…...MORE

Now to choose a couple hobbies and wait for that phone call in October.
See also:
The Secret Formula For Winning a Nobel Prize 
Hot on the heels of my astounding lack of success winning a MacArthur 'Genius Grant'* we visit BBC-Future.
My advice is to stay away from the hard science prizes and shoot for something that can't be falsified, maybe a Peace or Economics Prize....