Eric Patrick Marr

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, University of Manchester. 2010's Nobel Prize Winners for Physics

Imagine if our America today was built on this…

“Do whatever you want to do, as long as it’s not boring.”

… instead of the dreary, sometimes dreadful mundaneness of most American schools and most American workplaces (where 80% of us are not passionate in what we do for a living).

This photograph is of Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom – and both winners of 2010′s Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking discovery of Graphene.

And thanks to BIF-7 and Daniel Pink, I was introduced to Andre’s and Konstantin’s eye-opening (but not surprising) story of just how they made their award-winning discovery.

Even though both are full-time researchers in their university, Andre and Konstantin won their Nobel Prize off the clock – in their free time.

Herein lies the problem – and solution – to not only America’s economic stagnation, but likewise to our individual lives’ stagnation: We spend SO much time following “protocol” of the day-to-day that we nearly completely neglect that place & time where our minds, curiosity, imagination and genius can roam free and discover big, brand new worlds.

Imagine what our world, our country, our lives would look like if “the socio-economic norm” didn’t require us to swat at gnats for 40 hours a week, but instead liberated us to hunt life’s big elephants (figuratively speaking, of course).

Imagine the breakthroughs you could discover if YOUR life’s and YOUR workplace’s only policy was, “do whatever you want to do, as long as it’s not boring.”