Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Published 1990 · 90,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Business & Self-Help, Nonfiction, Psychology
How hard is Flow to read?
Flow scores 28 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: 30 out of 100
- Clear, accessible psychology. Key concepts well-defined.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Psychological theory grounded in concrete examples.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Rich with research findings and illustrative examples.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Direct presentation of research and principles.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Flow itself is a conceptual metaphor. Otherwise analytical.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Earnest, enthusiastic scientific communication.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Clear principles presented throughout. Practical conclusions offered.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Ten chapters progressing from theory to application.
How Flow is regarded
Flow holds a literary regard score of 54 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.