That's nice. Here's a list of a ton of highly cited computer scientists, many of them of which didn't spin a self-help career: http://www.guide2research.com/scientists/

There's really no such thing as spare time. He could've spent all that time writing self-help by doing more research. Since there's a huge supply of self-help and everyone being begged to be told what to do and it requires no real sense of expertise other than anecdotes, its an easy, albeit time consuming, income. There's not a huge supply of good research.

Highly rated books, especially on Amazon are a dime-a-dozen. For example, Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for life has been on the amazon best-seller list for 61 weeks and that book is poorly edited and contains incredibly bad advice. If you'd like me to elaborate, I can but that would have to be in another post.

The books may cover different topics, but the theme remains the same. In order to be a great student, you have to do what your told, engage with the lessons, do the assignments and study to pass the tests. It's that simple. It's all about finding the time to do the work and doing it in the best way you can. A plethora of strategies to achieve this can be found online from note taking strategies, to reading papers, to reading books on specific topics, etc. with most of it being free. However, the easiest way is to simply ignore all the extra brain power needed to adhere to the systems and engage with the work.

You also have to come to the realization that even if you do the work, you may reach limitations that you cannot overcome and you may need to accept some hard truths about things you may not be able to achieve. For example, you may not get into MIT, you may not build a successful, huge company, you may not complete a degree. However, its the experiences that make you successful, not the prestige. You also have to understand that certain socio-economic factors that are completely out of your control can cause you not to reach these goals as well.

Now that I've condensed half the contents of those 3 books into 2 paragraphs, care to pay me $500 and call it good? You also mis-characterized my original claim that I could sum all 6 books into 1 page, when I meant the 3 books about being a great student.

The "free market" is highly relevant because it means anyone can make/sell/buy good/services as they choose. If you don't want to buy/read a book you are free not to. But unless you produce something better or offer an alternative recommendation, don't be a hater on Cal's content.

It's not highly relevant, because you aren't required to produce anything better or offer an alternative recommendation. One can simply critique the current iteration and cause people to give pause for thought and look elsewhere. Also, what if there is nothing better? What if its all crap and people don't know it? What if people just read my two paragraphs, started applying their own minds and didn't need a 224 page book to tell them some truisms?

I could give a crap about what some arbitrary newspaper claims is a great book via sales numbers and some "secret formula". How many people bought the book and never read it? What if the book simply gamed the formula to get on the list?