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Buying Guide: Get Organized: Clean Up Your Passwords
Contents
- Get Organized: Clean Up Your Passwords
- Why Password Strength Matters
One organizational chore that I do about twice a year is change my most important passwords.
When I think about staying organized and trying to keep on top of crucial chores, like seeing the dentist or changing my passwords, I always try to remember that the point isn't to be perfect. The point is to do a little work now to protect yourself, protect your assets, or keep yourself in good shape—not "perfect" shape—for the future so that when the next stage of organization or chores comes, you don't feel overwhelmed like you have to tackle it all. You will already have done some of the work.
When I think about changing my passwords, I don't get caught up in changing them all. Rather, I prioritize the ones that protect the most important data. And if I have time, maybe I'll do some others. An effective strategy for being organized is to always have building blocks: The organization you do now should support more organization or some other activity later. And the concept of blocks is important, too. Every part of a large organization task must be divisible into component parts.
Changing your most important passwords will probably take you about 15 to 30 minutes if you think of it as three blocks:
1. prioritizing
2. creating a recipe
3. changing the actual passwords.
If you're feeling more ambitious and want to redo your entire password system, say, by adopting a password manager like LastPass ($1 per month), give yourself at least an hour. LastPass creates and encrypts passwords for you, and automatically logs you into sites whenever you enter the LastPass password. The only password all you have to remember is one password to unlock LastPass. A good password manager also works across multiple devices, like your laptop and smartphone. Remember, setting up a good password manager for the first time takes longer than changing your most important passwords, but it's likely a one-time effort with long-term payoff.
Either way, let's talk about why changing your passwords is so important.—Next: Why Password Strength Matters >