It's not necessarily one or the other.

Born 100 years after Montaigne, Samuel Pepys wrote a diary that was considerably more list oriented. It's my guess that Pepys would have been delighted to have access to quantified life tools. He often tells us when he got up each morning, and each thing that happened throughout his day. I'm not sure that he often goes into details concerning what he ate at his meals, but the reader definitely gets a feeling of play-by-play with only limited reflection.

I haven't read extensively in the diary, though via my RSS reader I get his "daily" updates which have been made into a blog with a daily posting that corresponds to the date of each entry. I don't read each entry but I'll often take a couple of minutes to review the daily entry. I don't find many in-depth details, but the diary is considered an excellent source for what his Wikipedia entry refers to as:

greater insight and understanding of life in London in the 17th century
and this suggests that he does go beyond what too often seems to me to be bland reporting. He may not be reflective like Montaigne, but there's a great deal that can be learned from his type of reportage as well.



Go to: The unbearable tedium of life-logging.