I have tried the data-hog approach in the past (about a year ago I stopped, after 5 months keeping daily logs of a few basic things), and
a) it did nothing to help me (back then my error was to not know what to actually do with the data; well, I had one idea, but it came out negative)
b) I collected data once per day; for me this was already quite a burden
c) I thought to write a tool for this, but for what I was interested in, any spreadsheet app was sufficient
Now my experience is, if you know what you want to change, the “attentiveness” approach (I hope I got the correct word from the dict, without some stupid connotation) is much more successful. Also, for longer-term mood-cycles, referring to my own notes of the corresponding time seems as good as I can make use of it now. I never got back looking at any numbers or graphs from the detailed-log.
At your edit: AFAIK this re-calculation of past experiences is well studied, though I do not know for which experience-domains this has been researched. If I do remember correctly, there was a Kahneman TED presentation linked here a few weeks ago, giving a side-note on this, and funny and short enough to fill a coffee break. Maybe from there you can find further references.
I have tried the data-hog approach in the past (about a year ago I stopped, after 5 months keeping daily logs of a few basic things), and
a) it did nothing to help me (back then my error was to not know what to actually do with the data; well, I had one idea, but it came out negative)
b) I collected data once per day; for me this was already quite a burden
c) I thought to write a tool for this, but for what I was interested in, any spreadsheet app was sufficient
Now my experience is, if you know what you want to change, the “attentiveness” approach (I hope I got the correct word from the dict, without some stupid connotation) is much more successful. Also, for longer-term mood-cycles, referring to my own notes of the corresponding time seems as good as I can make use of it now. I never got back looking at any numbers or graphs from the detailed-log.
At your edit: AFAIK this re-calculation of past experiences is well studied, though I do not know for which experience-domains this has been researched. If I do remember correctly, there was a Kahneman TED presentation linked here a few weeks ago, giving a side-note on this, and funny and short enough to fill a coffee break. Maybe from there you can find further references.