Memento Mori: The Last-Day Priority Audit
Judge each activity by whether you'd do it on your last day
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 82%
The Stoics, agreeing with the Epicureans, held that death should not be feared, since as Epicurus put it, where death is you are not. What matters is that life is finite, so time is the one resource you can never get back. Seneca noted we track loans of money carefully yet give our time away as if it were infinite. The exercise is a priority audit: take a normal day, list what you actually do, and score each activity against two questions, is this meaningful to me, and would I do this on the last day of my life? Mindless television or endless social media tend to fail both. Then you act on the list, doing less of what fails and redirecting that time toward what matters. It is a restructuring of priorities in light of finitude, not a morbid fixation.
Origin
From Stoic writings including Seneca's On the Shortness of Life, aligned with Epicurus on death; presented by Pigliucci on Modern Wisdom, drawing on an exercise in his book with Gregory Lopez.
Core principles
- 01Death should not be feared: where death is, you are not
- 02Life is finite, so time is your least recoverable resource
- 03Live as if you don't know which day is your last, because you don't
- 04Guard your time as carefully as you guard your money
- 05Restructure priorities around what is meaningful
How to run it
- 1
Capture a normal day
Take a representative day and write down the range of things you actually do from waking to sleeping.
Pro tip Use a routine day, not an unusual one, since most of life is repetition.
- 2
Score meaningfulness
For each activity, ask honestly whether it is meaningful to you.
- 3
Apply the last-day test
For each activity, ask whether you would still be doing it if you knew this was the last day of your life.
Pro tip This is a very hard question; sit with the discomfort rather than dodge it.
- 4
Identify the failures
Flag the activities that score low on both, such as mindless TV or aimless social media.
- 5
Act on the list
Do less of the low-value activities and redirect the reclaimed time toward meaningful ones like reading, friends, or real conversation.
Pro tip Guard your time the way you would guard a loan of money; unlike money, time cannot be repaid.
Watch out Living as if death were near is a reprioritization tool, not a licence for reckless hedonism.
In the wild
During lockdown Pigliucci received far more requests for interviews and chats than he could accept. Applying the finitude principle, he reminded himself that his weekly time is limited and cannot be repaid, so he had to be picky and look into who the host was before saying yes. The last-day lens turned an overwhelming inbox into a clear filter for where his finite hours should go.
→ His limited time was allocated deliberately to the most worthwhile requests.
Common mistakes
Treating time as infinite
People guard money but give time away freely, forgetting it is finite and unrecoverable. The audit only works if you take that seriously.
Reading it as morbid rather than clarifying
The point is not to fear death but to let its certainty sharpen your priorities toward meaning.
Is it for you?
Best for
People who feel their days leak away on activities they don't value.
Not ideal for
Anyone whom mortality reflection destabilizes rather than clarifies.
From the transcript
“Number one, is this meaningful to me? And number two, would I be doing this on the last day of my life? It really puts…”
“People ask us for our time, and we just freely give it as if we had an infinite amount of it, but we don't.”
From the episode
5 Exercises From Stoicism To Improve Your Life - Massimo Piggliuci - #170
Massimo Piggliuci