While I always had a knack for school and always did enough to stay on top and get by, my interest in computers and video games started dominating my life. From my teenage years to adolescence, I conditioned myself to enjoy my hobbies without restrictions. Only as I reached adulthood did I realize that my obsession with video games has morphed into addiction and stripped me of any ambition.

As any conscious video game enthusiast will tell you, such addiction is surprising because it rarely gets the publicity it deserves. Usually, everyone celebrates technological progress and dismisses the shadow it casts on a generation encapsulated in a digital bubble. Just because video game addiction has no lethal consequences does not mean it cannot sabotage a healthy way of life.

The red flag that helped me change my life for the better was a conscious observation of attention span decay. Career paths that seemed appealing for a wide variety of reasons became unappealing and boring.

To change my life, I decided to stick to my passion for computers and turn it into a strength. By pursuing coding tasks that interest me, I started to make money with simple software and discovered a niche that kept me focused and engaged – web scraping. My path to salvation was data aggregation, and it reignited my ambition.

In this article, I will go over the technical details, tips, and interests that got me hooked on coding and web scraping. What makes programming appealing to me are the endless possibilities – because there is no end goal, you have to enjoy the journey. By coding and using my web scrapers, I also learned about proxy servers. Because I live in Europe, I decided to use a US proxy to access geo-blocked websites and collect their data. US proxies helped me extract statistical information from pages linked with my hobbies and associate my new pursuit with other interests in my life. While I used different proxy servers over my short career, today I go with Smartproxy because I know I’ll get the best deals for web scraping, as well as educational material to learn more about the utilization of intermediary servers. Stick around if you believe programming can help you change your life as well!

A Combination of Passion and Discipline

While I could always imagine myself pursuing a profitable career with passion, the motivation it generates quickly dwindles away. The development of valuable skills is impossible without discipline. While you can always imagine yourself working on your dream project, most of us visualize the end result.

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Source: http://www.michigansportszone.com/coding-changed-my-life-and-it-can-change-yours-too/