It's the eternal struggle, creating a strong password that is hard to crack yet easy to remember.

We are usually forced to use random letters uppercase and downcase, numbers and symbols and the password should be at least 8 characters long.

All of that is very good for security but very bad for our brains. If you try to remember: HP2Epzo&BTPuyQV chances are that you will end up writing it down on a piece of paper.

So here is the trick I use to generate passwords that are easy to memorize.

Use letters from a sentence

It has the perfect balance between security and rememberability.

Think of a sentence that you remember from a movie or from a song that you like and then use the first letter of each word to create the password.

To add an extra level of security you can:

• Use the last letter from each word.
• Alternate between the first and the last word.
• Substitute one letter with a symbol like: # $ % & * . ,
• Add numbers to the sentence if there are none.
• Think of a song you don't like yet you know the lyrics instead of one that you like.

... be creative.

These are a couple of examples using Iron Maiden songs.

Fly on you way like an eagle, fly as high as the sun.

The resulting password is: foywlaefahats

Let's improve it a bit:

With an ampersand to join the two sentences: foywlae&fahats

Adding the year that the album was released: foywlae&fahats1983

Another example:

Oh Well, wherever, wherever you are, Iron Maiden's gonna get you, no matter how far.

The resulting password is: owwwyaimiggynmhf

That's a very good password by itself but we can spice it up.

Put Iron Maiden in uppercase: owwwyaIMiggynmhf

Add some numbers and symbols. I'm adding the year that the album was released and changing the first O with an asterisk.

The resulting password is: 1980*wwwyaIMiggynmhf

Summary

As you can see generating secure passwords that are easy to remember is not as hard as it may seems if you are creative.

Anyway what I would recommend you is to use a password manager if you can. Let them generate the passwords for you.

But even a password manager needs a password to open it and also there are other situations like starting a session in your computer, that requires you to enter a password.

With the help of your favorite movie/song and a bit of creativity you can create good passwords that are hard to crack and yet rememberable.