Adaptive time management is a newly developed life-history framework that integrates humans’ capacity for mentaltime travel with mortality awareness as a strategic process for time and resource allocation. Rather than triggering terrormanagement, we conceptualize mortality awareness as an adaptive cue that recalibrates subjective time perception and episodicfuture thinking. This framework maps three key life-history factors (resource scarcity, unpredictability, and harshness) ontocorresponding decision premises perceived remaining time, death’s uncertainty, and life’s inevitability. We review evidencesuggesting that (1) constricted horizons accelerate delay discounting and favor immediate, fast strategies; (2) unpredictability ofdeath (temporal variation of death) evokes emotions and prompt strategic present-oriented choices that secure survival under high-risk conditions; (3) inevitability of death (life’s finitude) fosters slow strategies through resource bet-hedging mental travel thatallows time measure and management; and (4) episodic end-of-life thinking elicits anticipatory emotions that adaptively regulateself-control and cognitive reappraisal. We also introduce preliminary findings on ’life-history intertemporal meditation’ as apotential intervention for adaptive regulation. Finally, we discuss adaptive time management in applications in death education andmental health. Together, this framework highlights how harnessing life-history mental time travel and mortality awareness canpromote adaptive decision-making and emotional resilience across the lifespan.