You Should Be Thinking About Death: Why Memento Mori is the Ultimate Life Hack

(Danny Kenny is a senior consultant and facilitator at InspireCorps and a writer for Big Think and his Substack, Seeking Wisdom. A PhD in Behavioral Science, he specializes in organizational and culture development, leadership transformation, and evidence-based behavior change to empower others to live a fulfilling life of meaning and purpose. His work can be found on Substack and his website.  This article, used with permission, originally appeared online on Danny’s substack.)

=============================================

The Moment Everything Becomes Clear

The plane lurched violently upward.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re making an emergency climb due to traffic in our flight path.”

In other words, “There’s a plane where it’s not supposed to be and we’re gtfo here.”

The captain’s voice was steady, but the g-forces pressing me into my seat and the fast climb told a different story. It was the kind of airplane experience where your mind races to conclusions you’d rather not reach.

As turbulence shook the cabin, I noticed something strange happening in my body. While others gripped armrests and exchanged terrified glances, I found myself focusing on my breath, to see how low I could bring my heartrate. Like a psychopath.

In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four.

In that moment of potential ending, I needed to know: Am I ready?

My grandfather used to say, “Make sure to have your bags packed.” Not to literally have your luggage by the door. He meant spiritually, emotionally, relationally. Be ready to leave this Earth without regrets, without unfinished business, without words left unsaid.

So as Flight 447 to Orlando climbed through that storm, I did my check:

Am I good with all my people?

The answer surprised me.

Despite all my achievement-chasing and productivity-hacking, despite the endless striving I’ve documented in these pages – I was good. I’d added warmth, humor, and joy to the lives I’d touched. My relationships were in a good spot. The world was, perhaps, a slightly brighter place for my existence.

It honestly wasn’t the answer I was expecting. But it was a grounding one.

A few minutes later, the plane leveled off. Thirty minutes later, we were safely on the ground in Orlando.

But something had shifted.

The rest of that trip felt clearer, less anxious, more grounded. The obnoxious emails waiting in my inbox had lost their sting. The “urgent” meeting that wasn’t really urgent revealed itself as something not to spend any additional energy on.

Death, it turns out, is an excellent bullshit detector. And we could be thinking about it way more often in our daily lives.

The Ancient Practice Modern High-Achievers Need Most

Memento Mori literally means “remember you will die” – sounds like the kind of thing that would send modern optimizers running for longevity protocols (infrared light, collagen, and definitely some kind of algae) and the promise of immortality. But as Tim Ferriss observed:

“I think about death all the time, and it’s not a morbid, sullen exercise for me … I find it to be, and this might sound strange, but greatly encouraging because it drives a sense of urgency, or at least time sensitivity, to a lot of my decisions.”

He goes on to describe looking at stars and contemplating that the light hitting your eye might be from a star that no longer exists. That realization isn’t an excuse for nihilism, it’s providing perspective, it’s clarifying, and it’s empowering. Suddenly, that workplace drama or Twitter beef reveals itself as the cosmic irrelevance it always was. “It’s all dust,” Ferriss says. “Nobody gives a fuck.”

Ryan Holiday puts it even more directly in his exploration of Stoic practices:

“Meditating on your mortality is only depressing if you miss the point. It is in fact a tool to create priority and meaning.”

The ancients knew this. Emperor Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

But here’s what Ferriss, Holiday, and the Stoics are really pointing to, and what that moment on Flight 447 made visceral for me:

Death isn’t the enemy. It’s the life coach you desperately need but never ever wanted to hire.

From Denial to Dance: Befriending Your Mortality

Ernst Becker won a Pulitzer for “The Denial of Death” by arguing that human civilization is essentially an elaborate defense mechanism against our awareness of our own mortality. We build monuments, chase achievements, create legacies to somehow convince ourselves we’ll find a way to overcome the one thing guaranteed by our biology.

This denial drives what Becker calls our “immortality projects,” the ways we try to ensure we’ll be remembered, that we’ll matter, that our existence will echo beyond our inevitable end.

For me, it was the 4.0 GPA, the PhD, the six-figure consulting gig. For you, it might be the IPO, the bestseller, the perfect family photo that gets 500 likes. We’re all running toward some imagined future, some imagined achievement, some imagined trophy that grants us immunity from dying. We’re scrambling to find the thing, and we’re scrambling to get the thing, and we’re scrambling to hold onto it forever.

We don’t have to do that.

This shift from seeing death as the enemy to recognizing it as a clarifying force has been gradual for me. Years of stoic practice, meditation, and honestly just watching life happen around me. People in my life passing on, some way too soon. People diagnosed with long-term illnesses. Consistent, regular reminders life is a finite, non-renewable resource.

The irony is that befriending death doesn’t make life feel shorter or scarier. It makes it feel more vivid, more precious, more worth living authentically rather than performatively.

When you truly internalize that you could leave life right now – not as some abstract philosophy, but as lived reality – several things happen:

1. Your real values emerge from the noise. Suddenly, being seen as successful matters less than actually connecting with people you love.
2. Fake urgency reveals itself. That “ASAP” email? Unless someone’s actually dying, it can wait.
3. Your tolerance for bullshit approaches zero. Life’s too short for meetings that should have been emails or relationships that drain more than they give.
4. What actually matters becomes blindingly clear. Hint: It’s usually much simpler than your brain wants to believe.

The 90-Year-Old Test (Your Future Self Knows What’s Up)

Here’s an exercise I give to every coaching client as we start our work together. It never fails to cut through the complexity we create around our lives:

Close your eyes. Fast-forward to age 90. It’s a Tuesday, and you’re sitting on a porch (because apparently all 90-year-olds have moved south and have porches in our imagination). What’s true about the best version of this moment?

When I do this exercise, the picture that emerges is remarkably simple:

• I’m healthy enough to move around and be active.
• I’m surrounded by people and family I love.
• I’m still sharp enough to write, teach, and serve others.

That’s it. That’s the whole list.

Notice what’s not there? The size of my bank account. The prestige of my job title. The number of LinkedIn followers. Whether I ever gave a TED talk.

None of it makes the cut when you’re staring down the barrel of your own mortality.

This isn’t about having low ambitions. It’s about having accurate ambitions. When you know how your story ends, you can work backward to figure out what actually matters now.

The 90-year-old test is where I start my values work, because it’s the only perspective that can’t be fooled by short-term thinking or social pressure. Your 90-year-old self doesn’t give a single, solitary shit about inbox zero or Q3 targets.

They care about whether you were present for the people who mattered.
They care about doing work in which you found meaning.
They care about not dying with a live unlived.

Practical Memento Mori: Tools for the Living

Here are a few more concrete practices that bring death’s clarity into daily life:

• Write Your Own Eulogy 

Many people have heard of this, but I recommend writing two versions: Write the eulogy for if you died today, then write the one you’d want read if you lived aligned with what truly matters. The gap between them is the work for you to do and the places for you to focus.

• The Deathbed Story Filter 

Before any major decision, ask: “On my deathbed, will I regret not doing this, or will I regret the things I sacrificed to do it? What’s the story I wish to be able to tell about this when I’m dying?” This question has helped me see through superficial achievement traps and, on the other side, has helped me choose the short-term painful thing that benefits me in the long-term.

• Study the Stars and Get Outside 

Adapting Ferriss’s advice, go outside at night and look up. Find a star. Consider that its light traveled years to reach you, that the star itself might already be gone. Find ways to be in grand scenes in nature. Find places that bring you “awe.” Let that cosmic perspective shrink your problems to their actual size.

When Death Becomes Your Productivity Hack

Here’s what nobody tells you about memento mori: It’s the ultimate productivity system.

Not productivity in the mercenary sense of cramming more into less time. But productivity in the truest sense: producing what matters, eliminating what doesn’t.

Doing More vs. Doing What Matters: The Productivity Shift You Need

When you truly grasp your mortality:

• You stop procrastinating on important conversations.
• You quit optimizing systems that optimize nothing meaningful.
• You delegate or delete the trivial many to focus on the vital few.
• You stop trading time for money once you have “enough.”
• You start creating things that might outlive you in useful ways.

After that flight to Orlando, I noticed immediate changes. Emails that would have sent me into an hour-long response spiral got two sentences or silence. Arguments that would have escalated got met with “You might be right” or “This isn’t worth our energy.”

I started to understand what Becker was really saying: We’re all going to die, and no amount of achievement changes that. But instead of this being depressing, it’s liberating.

But the biggest shift? I started prioritizing shared meals with loved ones like they were board meetings with God himself/herself. Because from the perspective of mortality, they basically are.

When you stop trying to outrun death through achievement, you can start using your limited time to contribute something meaningful. The question shifts from “How can I matter forever?” (an absurd exercise likely to lead to shallow, inauthentic answers) to “How can I matter right now?” (a powerful question for finding compassionate action to make the world a little bit better around you, in this moment).

Your Mortality, Your Mentor

As I write this, I’m thinking of my Uncle Ward. A kind, loveable, and humble man, he was an example to all who met him. And he passed, far too soon, in August 2023 after a horrific battle mixing throat cancer and Crohn’s disease that meant for months, he could not eat and barely speak. He was far too gentle, too kind, too good to have deserved a fight I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

And yet, even as he lost weight and even when words became too painful to form, Uncle Ward still showed up for his family. Still managed to communicate love through presence alone. Still found ways to express care even as his body betrayed him.

I remember how he’d text me about the latest Blackhawks or Cubs game, or to share the latest news on my one friend who made it to the MLB. For anyone he knew driving to or from Chicago, he would be checking the weather for them, letting them know the forecast and the ideal driving windows to avoid the worst of it. And there was nothing any of his many nieces or nephews could accomplish without Uncle Ward being one of the first to congratulate them for it.

By remembering my Uncle Ward, who is no longer with us, I remember to live. I remember how he loved his family and his friends. I remember the joy (and agony) of his Chicago Cubs fandom (as a Cardinals fan, I am contractually bound to submit an obligatory boooo here. Uncle Ward would understand). I remember the generosity of his spirit, the first to serve charity, to leave behind a bigger tip, to check in on his many nieces and nephews to congratulate them on their latest accomplishment.

And the reality is: My Uncle doesn’t get to do those things anymore on this Earthly plane …

But I do.

While my Uncle is busy fishing with my grandpa in the afterlife, I (along with everyone who attended Uncle Ward’s funeral and everyone who has ever lost someone they’ve loved) we get to honor their passing for them and for ourselves with every action we choose in the time we have remaining.

This is the paradox of memento mori: The more we remember death, the more I remember and miss my Uncle, my Grandpas, or anyone else that’s gone before us – the more fully we live. The more we befriend mortality (our own or the people in our lives), the less it controls us.

Yes, this feels morbid. Admittedly, it feels weird. It feels like we need to be wearing way more black, dark eyeliner, and spikes on our clothing to fully embrace this.

But death is the feature of our existence that makes life meaningful.

Without scarcity, there’s no value.
Without endings, there’s no urgency to begin.
Without mortality, there’s no reason to choose what matters over what’s merely urgent.

So, I’ll ask you what I asked myself on that turbulent flight:

Are you ready? Are you good with your people? Have you said what needs saying, done what needs doing, loved who needs loving?

If not, what are you waiting for?

Death is waiting to help you figure out what actually matters.

All you have to do is listen.

 

(Please scroll down to comment, and feel free to share our blog posts with others who may benefit from them.)

---

Final Exit Network (FEN) is a network of dedicated professionals and caring, trained volunteers who support mentally competent adults as they navigate their end-of-life journey. Established in 2004, FEN seeks to educate qualified individuals in practical, peaceful ways to end their lives, offer a compassionate bedside presence and defend a person’s right to choose. For more information, go to www.finalexitnetwork.org.

Payments and donations are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Final Exit Network is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

 

---

Enter your email address to receive these posts in your inbox each week:

First Name:

Last Name:

Email address:

Leave this field empty if you're human: