Or at the very least you should sign up for a password storage system like https://passpack.com
Which would be useful but would still require me to keep track of them manually.
Then there's the password for timecards (outsourced to another company), goal setting and training (outsource to another company), 401k, medical insurance and just because, another company (that isn't our medical insurance) for handling prescriptions.
Our Corporation has one password expiration timeframe (90 days but not really because they start nagging two weeks prior and won't shut up until you change the password) and the Corporation that owns The Corporation has another timeframe (60 days, but again, they start bitching about two weeks prior) and of course, all these sites have their own ideas about "secure passwords."
Weren't certificates supposed to deal with all this?
Wait ... don't answer that. I don't think I want to know the answer.
Especially the ones that are used irregularly (annually, quarterly), so SSO isn't a priority.
My passwords are all on a whiteboard by my desk.
Even with an algorithm, you're still relying on human memory. As Schneier and other have been recommending for a long time, write down your passwords. People already understand some amount of physical security, which is knowledge that can can utilized for password storage.
As long as human memory is the weakest link, password strength will always be de facto limited to the amount of entropy that a human can reasonably memorize. Unfortunately, brute-force password cracking capabilities flew past that limit a long time ago.
I have 300+ personal passwords. 30 more for work would be a trivial addition.
* A password for the account request system
* A password for the internal services system
* My email password
* My password for the local network
* My password for the product management system
* Pass for the old product management system that we still use
* Pass to the online drawing and document retrieval system
* Password to control room computer systems
* Various maintenance laptop user names and passwords
* Various passwords to systems I'd rather not mention, call them about 10 in total
That's 25 to 30 passwords, total, that I need to remember and use on a regular basis. I've given up NOT writing them down. And IT won't give me any kind of secure password manager, so I resort to a password protected Excel spreadsheet. And I'm not alone.