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This is a repost of a previous post, see here.
Now that our dryer is mostly fixed I have to spend the day washing and drying clothes. I was reminded of this post today when I had to change the password on our bank account’s site. It requires us to do that every 30 days, which I think is kind of cool!
photo credit: Mirko Macari
Lifehacker posted about a hack for staying motivated to reach goals by using passwords that include your goals.
You can add some other letters, characters or numbers to make them more secure.
His example was the word “diet” on a Gmail account your password might look like this: GM*diet1.
This is something I started doing about 6 months ago. I reached one of my goals (taking a vacation to San Francisco with my husband) before I expected to!
This tip makes me focus on our goals, the same way I do when I write it down. It’s part of my greater goal of living mindfully. Maybe you believe in The Secret, or the power of positive thinking, or prayer. Think of your password typing as another extension of your beliefs. You could instead of choosing a specific goal choose something like “mindful”, or “peace”.
Personally I prefer taking my goal, and adding a date. That’s just me being my type A self. I don’t always type out my password on every site (Firefox remembers some), but for many sites (like my bank, Wesabe, my blog) I do it daily, and often several times a day!
Here’s what my passwords might look like (obviously this isn’t my real password, it’s just an example!):
Goal: Lose 5 pounds in a month.
Goals shortened:
- Lose5Nov09
- -5/11-09
- LOSE5by11/09
- LOSE5Nov09
I’m sure you can come up with more variations.
Next you want to generate a password. To do this you can use a random password generator (this one has a bookmarklet so you can do it while you are on the site you are creating a password for!) that will take your goal or reminder and turn it into a secure password, or you can simply add your own random characters. For instance:
- #!@Lose5<>Nov09-1
- rewq-5/11-09uiop
- 4thLOSE5by11/09ht4
- 678LOSE5Nov09zxc
The possibilities are pretty endless. Giving you both a motivating password, and a means to make it difficult to hack.
Now that I’ve reached my goal, I’ve changed all my passwords. Don’t forget to update your list of passwords. If you don’t have a master list of passwords, create one today. I have a computer copy, and a hard copy stored safely, and a hard copy that is stored out of the house.
Do you use a motivator, or goal for your passwords?
Kelly
