The advice you hear is good:

1) Use strong passwords/passphrases for every account. (Strong = mix of letters, numbers, cases and special characters.)

2) Use different passwords for every account.

3) Never write down your password. Ever.

4) Never tell anyone your password. Ever.

The results are bad. All of this quickly adds up to dozens of accounts you have no idea how to get back into two weeks later. So how is any mortal man or woman supposed to follow these security best practices without looking like a doofus and constantly popping “Login attempts exceeded” screens?

There is a certain art to creating memorable passwords. I recommend two methods:

Look at the Titlebar Method: Create a password that uses some parts of the website name or function. For example, an eBay password could be {B1dd1ng0n-Junk-} or {L0s1ng@uct10nzzz}. A combination of l33t, poor spelling and your own personal touch can help greatly while staring at the eBay login page. Incidentally, you may want to look up on game theory and especially The Winner’s Curse. If you absolutely must have that priceless doodad, you can just look up at the titlebar and remember why you’re there.

Almost the Same Method: Say you are an auction fiend with accounts on eBay, uBid and auction.com. You’re passwords could be {J0n3s1n’3B@y}, {J0n3s1n’uB1d} and {J0n3s1n’@uct10n.c0m}. Now this does present one problem. If the username and password to one account is compromised, it would not take a great stretch of imagination to figure out the other ones.

When composing password remember your friends: complexity and length. This may seem imposing at first. It is certainly more challenging than {password123}  but the learning curve is not too bad. For example, my facebook password is more than 10 characters long and I can bang it out in about a second and half consistently. I am also notorious for not checking my fb either so it can’t take that much practice. Good luck! (and with strong passwords, you won’t need nearly as much of it!)