What Memento Mori Can Teach Us About Time, Growth and Work

We spend a significant part of our lives at work. We learn new skills, take on responsibilities, make mistakes, build relationships, pursue promotions and try to become better at what we do.

Yet, somewhere along the way, work can begin to feel like a race against an invisible clock. We become conscious of how quickly we are progressing, how we compare with others, whether we are learning fast enough, and whether our efforts are being noticed.

I have often wondered how differently we might approach our careers if we became more aware of one simple truth: this phase of our lives is temporary.

The role we are in today will change. The organisation may change. Our ambitions may change. The things we currently struggle with may eventually become things we no longer think about. Even the professional identity we spend so much time building will continue to evolve.

This thought brought me to an ancient Stoic idea: Memento Mori.

Understanding Memento Mori

Memento Mori is a Latin expression that is commonly translated as “remember that you are mortal” or “remember that you will die.”

Although the phrase has roots extending beyond Stoicism, the reflection on mortality became an important part of Stoic thought. Philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius repeatedly reflected on the brevity and impermanence of human life in their writings.

At first, the idea can sound rather dark for a discussion about professional growth. Why bring mortality into conversations about careers, ambition and workplace development?

The Stoic intention, however, was not simply to make people think about death. Remembering that life is finite was a way of gaining perspective about how one chooses to live. If our time is limited, then our attention, energy and choices become more valuable. Mortality becomes a reminder to focus on what matters rather than becoming completely consumed by things that may have little lasting significance.

In that sense, Memento Mori is less about death and more about awareness of time.

And that is where I began to see an unexpected connection with workplace growth.

What If We Looked at Our Careers Through the Same Lens?

I started wondering what would happen if we took the underlying idea of Memento Mori and brought it into our professional lives.

Not as a reminder that our careers will end, but as a reminder that every stage of our careers has an end.

There is a strange tendency in professional life to treat our current circumstances as though they are permanent. When we are beginners, we sometimes feel that we will always be the person who does not know enough. When we are struggling with confidence, we can assume that everyone else has already figured things out. When we are waiting for recognition, it can feel as though the next promotion or milestone will finally make us feel accomplished.

But professional life keeps moving.

The uncomfortable learning phase eventually becomes experience. The difficult project becomes something we look back on. The person who once needed guidance eventually becomes someone capable of guiding others. What feels like an enormous part of our identity today can become only a small chapter in our professional story.

Looking at work this way changes the nature of the question.

Instead of asking only, “How quickly am I progressing?” Perhaps we can also ask, “What am I doing with the time in which I am growing?”

Time Changes the Way We Think About Growth

Modern workplaces understandably place considerable emphasis on progress. We measure performance, set goals, pursue certifications, seek promotions and develop new skills. These things can provide direction and motivation.

The problem begins when progress becomes the only measure through which we experience our careers.

We can become so focused on reaching the next milestone that the present stage starts feeling like something we simply need to get through. We tell ourselves that we will feel confident once we become more experienced, that we will participate more actively once we know enough, or that we will finally feel successful once we reach the next position.

There is always another milestone waiting.

Memento Mori offers a different perspective. If our professional lives are made up of finite periods of time, then the period in which we are learning is not merely an obstacle between where we are and where we want to be. It is also part of our career.

The uncertainty, the questions, the mistakes and even the slower days are part of the process through which professional identity develops.

Growth does not happen only when we arrive somewhere. It also happens while we are on our way there.

The Beginner Phase Is Temporary

One of the most uncomfortable experiences at work can be being new at something.

We often compare our beginning with somebody else's middle. A colleague may have years of experience, while we are still learning the fundamentals. Someone may speak confidently in meetings while we are still deciding whether our question is worth asking. Someone else may complete a task quickly while we need considerably more time to understand it.

That comparison can make the learning phase feel like evidence that we are falling behind.

But what if we remembered that being a beginner is itself a temporary stage?

The person who struggles to understand something today may understand it differently after months of practice. The question that feels embarrassing to ask today may become something we confidently explain to someone else later.

This does not mean that everyone progresses at the same pace or that effort automatically produces a particular outcome. It simply means that we should be careful about turning a temporary stage of learning into a permanent judgment about ourselves.

Perhaps one of the most useful applications of Memento Mori at work is this: do not mistake the chapter you are currently living for the entire story of your career.

What About the Time We Spend Worrying About Other People's Opinions?

There is another part of professional life where time can quietly disappear: worrying about how we are perceived.

We replay conversations after meetings. We wonder whether we sounded knowledgeable enough. We think about why someone received recognition and we did not. We become overly conscious of whether we are fitting in, whether we are progressing at the expected pace, or whether others have formed an opinion about our abilities.

Some reflection is useful. Feedback matters, professional relationships matter and self-awareness matters.

But there is a difference between learning from other people's perspectives and allowing those perspectives to occupy too much of our mental space.

When we remember that our time is finite, some of these concerns can begin to look different. We may still care about our reputation and performance, but we may become more selective about which opinions deserve our attention and which ones do not.

After all, a career cannot be lived entirely through the eyes of other people.

Growth Requires Participating Before We Feel Completely Ready

Perhaps this is where Memento Mori becomes particularly relevant to courage at work.

We often postpone action until we feel prepared. We wait until we know enough before speaking, until we feel confident before taking responsibility, or until we feel qualified before attempting something unfamiliar.

Preparation has value. So does competence. But complete readiness is often an illusion.

There will almost always be something else to learn.

If we spend too much of our professional lives waiting to become the person who feels completely ready, we may miss opportunities to become that person in the first place.

A more useful approach may be to accept that growth is usually accompanied by some uncertainty. We can ask questions while learning, contribute while developing, take feedback without treating it as a verdict on our worth, and allow ourselves to improve through experience.

Remembering that our time is limited does not mean rushing into every opportunity. It means becoming more conscious of which opportunities we are avoiding simply because we are afraid of not being perfect.

Perhaps the Point Is Not to Hurry

Memento Mori can sound like a reminder of death, but perhaps its deeper value lies in what the awareness of limited time does to the way we live.

At work, it can remind us that the stage we are in today will eventually become a chapter we have already lived. The period of being new will pass. The uncertainty will change. The project we are worrying about today will eventually become something we look back on. Even the milestones we are working so hard to reach will eventually become part of a larger story.

Perhaps knowing this can change the way we experience growth.

We can still be ambitious without constantly feeling behind. We can care about how we are perceived without allowing every opinion to define us. We can strive for the next opportunity while still being present in the one we have. Most importantly, we can allow ourselves to grow without believing that we must become completely ready before we begin.

Because a career is not simply a race toward the next designation, promotion or achievement. It is a significant part of our lives, made up of ordinary days, difficult lessons, unexpected opportunities, relationships, mistakes and moments of becoming.

Memento Mori reminds us that time moves forward, whether we notice it or not. Perhaps workplace growth begins with noticing it.

Not to make us work faster. Not to make us chase more. But to make us more intentional about what we are learning, what we are giving our energy to, and who we are becoming while we are here.

And perhaps, years from now, when this chapter of our professional life is no longer our present but our past, that perspective will matter just as much as the milestones we achieved.