Tweak your passwords to benefit from them [How to be an Original]
Passwords! My God, don’t you need a frigging shitload of them these days? I have a love/hate relationship with Digg, I keep forgetting the password I have there (it’s because they don’t allow special characters like ? @ ! &), forcing me to go through the annoying process of resetting it, confirming that via email, rethinking a new password, working my way through all the errors caused by special characters, compromising me in a password that I’m bound to forget again.
I was listing the passwords I use online, and it was plain scary. The list is enormous, and I haven’t even finished it yet (scroll down for the list). Argh!
A lot of them share passwords, because my brain capacity is limited (or I’m just too lazy to have different ones for each site). Most of them I use only once in a while, but some of them I use daily. And these are where you can put your passwords to work for you. You can turn them into a fun and productive event, rather than an annoying but necessary event.
Passwords that you use frequent, should change frequently as well (how annoying is that!?). And they should be strong passwords too, if you care about the content they are protecting (or to satisfy the IT guidelines). This can sometimes be a real challenge, but with these simple tips you can turn them into assets, instead of a nuisance.
List your goals
This is something I’ve used a lot. Whatever goals you have, use them for your passwords. I’ve used passwords like:
- Finish2ndFloor!
- GrowBlogNow
- Get2500RSS
They’re pretty strong passwords, and why you type ‘em in you get reminded instantly of what you want to achieve.
Prevent pitfalls of bad habits
When you log into one of your biggest time wasters for instance (IM, gaming, Twitter, Facebook, whatever), remind yourself that it’s a time waster. Use a passwords like:
- OneHourIsEnough (upper and lower case, not too bad)
- RUsure? (special character added, pretty strong)
- 1h=Q2>1h=Q4 (yay, Covey in action with a very strong password)
Learn spelling
Pick a word you have trouble spelling word and use that as a password. The sheer repetition will make sure you’ll never spell it wrong again.
Examples: Definitely - Opthalmology - Massachusetts - Prolificacy
Learn (a couple of words in) a foreign language
It can be fun to add some foreign words to your vocabulary. Want to know how to say beer in 20 langauges? Just look them up and use them as passwords:
- Spanish:Cerveza
- French:Biere (okay, accents are a problem)
- Italian:Birra
Or use the real translation:
- Merde=Damn
- Giornale=Newspaper
- Freizeit=LeisureTime
Extend your vocabulary
Use a new word and it’s meaning as the password. The trick is to find synonyms here, because the dictionary meanings tend to be long.
- Prolificacy=Fruitfulness
- Defiance=Resistance
- Superfluous=Redundant
Use affirmations
Affirmations are a popular technique to get you (back) in a productive state, or a harmonious state or whatever state you want to be in. In a lot of self improvement books the use of positive affirmations is advocated, but how often are you going to sit and read them out loud to yourself?
But if you use them as your passwords, you will repeat them often. Some examples:
- I’mFinanciallyFree
- IAm@Peace
- MyBodyVibratesWithEnergy
Have fun!
Admitted, it’s only a microhack. It’s not going to massively change your world, make you more productive, increase your IQ, expand your network or whatever. But it turns passwords into fun, and you might also learn something.
The sites I need passwords for:
So far I have: StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse, Facebook, Twitter, Twitterfeed (via OpenID), Reddit, Gaia (former Zaadz), MyBlogLog, WordPress.com, How to be an Original (admin interface), WordPress DIY (admin interface), Feedburner, Joe’s Goals, Flickr, iStockPhoto, several bank accounts (4), Paypal, Neteller, Dutch State Lottery, Gmail (google, thanks for sharing passwords across ALL services!!), Lotus Notes at work, Hosting at Argeweb, Hosting at GoDaddy, Cell phone account at Orange (2), Internet Provider, alumni network of former employer, bol.com, Amazon, Text Link Ads, Linkworth, YouTube, Revver, several online poker accounts (pokerstars, partypoker, and the likes) and counting…
This article is published by How to be an Original. Visit the article online:
Tweak your passwords to benefit from them
Original post here: Lodewijk
Comments: