Same. In three years of immersing myself in my passion (pentesting/vuln research), I've tripled my income and vastly improved my quality of life. A lot of it was just going after my area of interest vs listening to other people tell me what I "need" to do before I go there.
Again, probably not the route if you aren't interested in it though... Not saying you need to wake up, hack, sleep, repeat, but you probably won't be able to "tough it out for a paycheck"... There needs to be a substantial level of passion/interest in the subject for it to work. IMO, that's where it goes wrong for a lot of people. They get excited about buying a bootcamp or whatever, but then quickly find out that it isn't for them and lose interest, or worse, go through the motions and then wonder why it isn't working...