Nick Bilton/The New York Times

At the end of 2005, Nicholas Felton decided to publish a report that would chronicle his life over the previous year. He looked through his music archives to see how many songs he had listened to. He checked his airline ticket stubs to see how many miles he had flown. He aggregated the number of books read and photos taken. He compiled those and myriad other data points into his first annual report about his life, aptly titled, “The Feltron Annual Report.” (The “r” in “Feltron” was added to include a subtle pseudonym component to the report.)

The following year, Mr. Felton continued his quest to catalog and collect the mundane moments of his life. This time, he took it one step further, tracking restaurants, beverages, types of meat eaten and a long list of other esoteric data points. This led to the “Feltron 2006 Annual Report” — the first printed version of the taxonomy.

The tradition continues today.

“I started collecting this data in 2005, and I hope to continue the collection process for at least a decade,” Mr. Felton said in an interview. “As the collection process has become more intense I’ve been able to use technology to help track what I’m doing, and I’ve tried to collect new types of information.”

Although this data collection started with a simple curiosity, it also helped Mr. Felton discover and monitor negatives in his life. For example, he gained a better understanding of the effects of his travel on the environment, and he found that the actual number of books he reads in a year falls short of his goals.

Each year, Mr. Felton adds a new twist to the reports. One report tracked every street he walked down in New York City. Another tracked the number of plants he killed.

“I wanted to understand the bleeding edge of reporting and quantifying myself,” Mr. Felton said.

The works of Mr. Felton blur the line between art and data. They are a poetic haze of information and well-designed storytelling — and of course, the discipline to collect all this information each year.

But they also signal the kind of data collection that is becoming easier for all of us to do.

It didn’t take long before strangers started asking how to create their own reports to quantify and collect information on themselves. This led Mr. Felton to start a Web site called Daytum that helps people to track and visualize things of interest. “People became self-reflexive, wanting to track food they’ve eaten, travel locations, and Daytum tries to conquer some of the uphill battles of collecting this information,” he said.

The “2009 Annual Report” took a different route: Mr Felton asked the people he interacted with on a daily basis to fill out an online survey describing their social experience with him: What was he wearing, what did he eat, was he happy or sad?

Nicholas Felton

In the end, 51,445 words were submitted by hundreds of friends, co-workers and random acquaintances. He then spent three weeks digging through it all and creating visualizations of the data. The result is now up for sale on his Web site.

Mr. Felton says that all the data he collects seems mundane to some people, but might become the norm in the future.

“Gradually there will be be more sensors everywhere,” he said. Technology like the FitBit Tracker and software on mobile phones will help people track and monitor health problems or other personal data.

Who knows, maybe one day we’ll all have our own annual reports.