For a few years running, I’ve taken some time in December to reflect and write on the previous 12 months. I find that it’s a nice way to consider repeated mistakes, lessons learned and stories collected. In the process, I leave out plenty of mundane details, like the food and beverages consumed, specific locations and general lifestyle tidbits. But those bits of daily minutiae can actually tell you a lot about how life was moving at a particular time.

If granular details sound like a snooze to you, look no further than the Feltron Report. Nicholas Feltron zealously tracks the humdrum data of his life, then plots it into slick graphical representations that he refers to as his “annual reports.” And what do we learn about Feltron’s life in, say, 2008? He took 1,468 photographs, read “The Mezzanine” and loved it, listened to 511 different music artists and sipped on 573 drinks with other people.

We probably don’t need to know this level of information about Feltron, but I’m honestly jealous of these meticulous chronicles. For that reason, I’m going to experiment with tracking my life in 2010 as well. I doubt I’ll have the discipline to jot down as many notes as Feltron, but there are a number of sites that should make the whole process fairly simple.

For starters, Feltron co-founded a data-tracking site, Daytum. The free version of the service offers limited display and page options, or for $4, you can graph out just about anything to your heart’s content. Lifehacker also posted a list of general and activity-specific (exercise, finance, etc.) online trackers, including Daytum. Justin Wehr’s Wehrintheworld blog is also a good primer for getting started with life tracking.

Even if you don’t care to record all of your comings and goings, this could be a handy tool for making good on New Year’s resolutions. Want to cut down on calories? Track it and watch what happens. Want kick that smoking habit once and for all? Track your habits to see your triggers, your progress and the money you save in the process.
This time next year, I’ll probably still perform an old fashioned 2010 roundup, but the life graphs would serve as the perfect appendix, yes?