I don't do passwords this way at work anymore, because they make us change it every 90 days. I just use keyboard patterns, and shift the pattern to the right for each successive password. Seriously people, expiring passwords is an idiotic idea.
It's fairly fast, actually. One of the things I've decided to do is trade some entropy for having only lower case letters and the minimum symbol count, because what tended to screw me up most was synchronizing the shift key with the rest of the password... which I suppose also gives a clue about the speed. It's at least no slower than a passphrase of equivalent strength, and it fits my brain.
But if passphrases work better for you, by all means, please do.
Also, I have a password manager. I only have about 4 of these at any given time, and I can afford the cognitive burden of ensuring they are all very strong. It'd be a different problem otherwise.