Deep Work by Cal Newport
Published 2016 · 320 pages · 70,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Business & Self-Help, Nonfiction, Psychology
How hard is Deep Work to read?
Deep Work scores 14 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 20 out of 100
- Accessible business/productivity vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 20 out of 100
- Abstraction: 22 out of 100
- Practical framework with concrete examples.
- Information density: 38 out of 100
- Moderate. Story-driven with research.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Four rules. Clear structure.
- Symbolic density: 80 out of 100
- Deep work vs shallow work as central metaphor.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Contrarian but earnest.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Clear prescriptions throughout.
- Structural complexity: 15 out of 100
- Two parts, four rules.
How Deep Work is regarded
Deep Work holds a literary regard score of 35 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.