Not long ago, I used to manage passwords by saving mnemonics (that only I understood) in a text file on my laptop. This worked pretty well for those passwords I could set myself (following the mnemonic patterns). This system wasn't available on my phone or other devices, which was inconvenient. The limitation of *what* it could store was much more serious: secrets like crypto tokens or credit card numbers, equally important, didn't fit the mnemonic pattern scheme, and therefore couldn't be stored safely in a plain text file. Instead, I resorted to multiple other ad-hoc systems, like pieces of paper or dedicated flash drives or even just memory, which I constantly dreaded would be leaked, lost or forgotten, a major source of anxiety for me.

When I went looking for a solution (and I was really only trying to replace my password system), Bitwarden immediately stood out. First, my profession (and my passion) is developing open source software, and closed-source, proprietary solutions were immediately off the table. None of the other remaining options checked off half the boxes boxes Bitwarden did, especially availability on all my devices (even in the browser!) and Internet synch on a self-hosted server. Bitwarden even checked off boxes I didn't even know I had, like automatic password filling inside the browser AND in Android apps. Bitwarden was clearly the top choice. I spent about an hour switching over, installing the Firefox extension on my Linux laptop and the Android app on my phone, and migrating some of my most-used passwords.

My life has never been the same since. Managing passwords is now almost effortless no matter which device I'm using, and no longer limited to the old mnemonic system. I didn't initially realize Bitwarden could also help remember so many other secrets, like credit cards, identities, GPG and SSH keys, API tokens and more, eliminating all my ad-hoc systems and with them, those feelings of dread and anxiety. That was undoubtedly one of the single hours spent of my life that has made a major, permanent, palpable improvement on my life every day since. Not an exaggeration!