New method measures emotional quality of daily experience

For Marcel Proust, the taste of a madeleine conjured remembrance of the distant past. In today's multi-tasking, hyper-speed world, it can be a trick to remember what we did yesterday.
But a new method of reconstructing the previous day's activities not only helps people remember how they spent their time, it also captures how they really felt about their activities.
The technique, described in the Dec. 3 issue of Science, provides insight into what people actually enjoy and what kinds of factors affect how happy we are with our lives.