How To Easily Remember 53 Different Passwords

Once upon a time, there were things called doors. Doors had locks. And locks had keys. And you never gave anybody your keys or else they would sneak in the middle of the night and steal your vegetables.

These days, instead of doors we have accounts. Accounts have user names. And user names have passwords. And you never give anybody your passwords or else they will sneak in the middle of the night and bid on stupid auctions with your credit cards, send nasty letters through your e-mail, and steal your vegetables.

So everyone knows we’re supposed to have “secure” passwords. You know…with capital letters, numbers, symbols. On top of that, we’re supposed to change them every month or two! But how many of us actually do this?

Nobody does! Because it’s difficult and annoying!

What about me? I have over 53 different computer and website accounts. That means 53 passwords. Would it surprise you to know that most of these passwords are different? Would you be even more surprised if I said I have every single one memorized?!

How Could I Possibly Remember 53 Different Passwords?!

Am I crazy? Am I a genius? No! I’m just a rabbit. Sane and simple. Humans have better memories than rabbits, so if I can do it, you easily can.

The secret is that I have a trick. The trick is that I have a system. And this system is what I’m going to share with you!

So What’s “The System?”

The system is incredibly simple. It’s just a pattern you can use to construct your passwords. I’ll guide you through it, step by step.

In summary we’ll be using:

A Head Password [like “kalekale“]
A Tail Password [like “34t34t“]
A Site Password [Amazon might be “am” for example]
And a way to put them together [like Head-Tale-Site = “kalekale34t34tam“]

So let’s start building our password list! I suggest you open up a text file and write down your password plan as you go through this article.

1. Pick A Head Password.

First of all, we’re going to pick a head password. This password will be the “base” for our more complicated password. But by itself, it should be fine for simple websites that don’t store any valuable information. Something like an online forum, a video game website, etc.

This should be 8 characters long and be easy to type. It’s good to use a number in it, but not necessary. Don’t worry about making it too complicated, but also make sure you don’t pick a single dictionary word like “umbrella” or “sandwich” or your best friend’s name.

I like kale, so I’d like to use that. But “kale” is too short and simple for a good password.

Three tricks you can use to make it better:

repeat part of the word [kalelele]
write it backwards [kaleelak]
substitute in numbers “license-plate style” [kaleka13] The “13” here looks like an ‘l‘ and backwards capital ‘E‘. Some common look-alikes are 1=l, 2=z, 3=E, 4=A, 5=s, 7=t, 9=g, 0=o. There are also 1=”one,” 2=”to” or “too,” 4=”for,” 8=”ate.”

Maybe I’ll use the first since it’s easy for me:

kalelele

2. Pick A Tail.

Now, we’re going to add a tail. It should be short [4-6 characters]. This little bit makes the password more secure and more difficult to guess. You’ll be using this for more important websites—your e-mail address, bank accounts, dating websites.

The tail should have at least two numbers in it. This makes it more secure and also means that if your head password doesn’t have one, you can just add the tail whenever a website requires a number.

You might pick one that’s easy to remember: a0z9 or az09 are the first and last numbers/letters.

Or one that’s easy to type: 34t34t or 123qwe each take two simple “finger rolls.”

You can use license-plate number substitution or just an easy to remember pattern.

If you want the tail to be more secure, add in a capital letter or a symbol as well. One easy way to do this is to pick two or three characters and repeat them, holding shift the second time. “34t#$T” may look complicated, but it’s just “34t” twice with the shift key down the second time.

Let’s use this…

34t34t

I like this also because it looks like “eateat,” which is exactly what you do with kale! Now we add this to our head password for more important websites:

kalelele + 34t34t = kalelele34t34t

3. Website Passwords

For the last and final step, we’ll make the password even more secure by making it different for every website we use! There’s no way we can really memorize a different password for every site, but what if we use part of the website’s name in our password?

I’ll use Paypal and eBay as examples:

the first two letters: “pa” and “eb“
the last two letters: “al” and “ay“
the first and last letters: “pl” and “ey“
the first letter and how long the name is “p6” and “e4“
etc

I think I’ll use the first two letters…thus, putting it all together, our passwords might look like this for these websites:

Head
Popcap: kalelele
Skype: kalelele

Head + Tail
Twitter: kalelele34t34t
Facebook: kalelele34t34t

Head + Tail + Site
Gmail: kalelele34t34tgm
Amazon: kalelele34t34tam

See how simple that is?! There are really only four things to remember: the head, tail, how you use the website name, and the order you put them in.

The most important part is staying consistent with how you construct your passwords.

Extra credit:

Mix up the order. Instead of head-tail-site, try site-tail-head or head-site-tail.
Keep a throw away password for websites you’ll never use again. If you’re just signing up to a website to download something, something like aaaa1234 or asdfasdf should work fine.
Use a site abbreviation all the time, no matter what.
Capitalize your site abbreviations.
Hold shift down for the second half of your tail for symbols and capital letters.

Picking a system and sticking to it can enable you to have dozens to hundreds of passwords that are all different and all easy to remember! I’ve been using a system like this for years and it’s worked beautifully for me. Let me know if you use this and how it works out for you!

~loy

P.S. I was going to patent this system, but as it turns out, U.S. law doesn’t allow rabbits to patent anything. If you liked this, or think it could help a friend, share it on Facebook or send someone an e-mail about it! Thanks!