We all know the risks of not changing our passwords – yet somehow it is never a priority. Louise Chunn explains why few people bother

You know you should; you know you must! But for some reason you just don’t ever seem to get around to changing your passwords. You could simply start using a password manager, an easy-to-access programme that safely tracks and stores your passwords, assigning different ones to each account. But do you? Surely there’s not a part of you that actually wants to be hacked by fraudsters?

Many of us struggle with tasks that need to be done, but do not appear to be urgent. “Of course I am a sucker for the urgent over the important. Everyone is,” says Margaret Heffernan, entrepreneur and author of business books Wilful Blindness and A Bigger Prize. “The important stuff is usually harder. I procrastinate too, where I feel guilty about something and prefer to ignore it.



“Wilful blindness is definitely at work here: people who get mired in debt typically do so when they stop opening envelopes that look like bills. They rarely throw them away – that would really be bad – so they keep them as though they’re going to attend to them one day,” she adds.



Our passwords remain secure for relatively long periods of time, and it’s inconvenient and time-consuming to change them

But when we don’t deal with a problem, thereby removing it from our list of concerns, says Heffernan, we “make more likely the very catastrophe we fear. Avoiding the issue gives us temporary relief, but amplifies long-term problems. That is why it is so uncomfortable. If we ignore it, it doesn’t go away: we give it time to grow and grow and grow, until we’re engulfed.” So the task ignored quickly grows into something too huge to ever be attempted.



Prof Frank Partnoy, author of Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, believes the key is to find a balance between snap decisions and eternal dithering.



“Sometimes we react too quickly; sometimes too slowly. It’s like the Goldilocks of time management. It’s hard to get it just right,” he says. Of course, if we get hacked, we rush to change our passwords immediately. “But, more typically, our passwords remain secure for relatively long periods of time, and it’s inconvenient and time-consuming to change them too frequently.”

What we should do, he explains is “manage delay”: figure out the trade-off between the risk of not changing our passwords and the cost of changing them constantly. He concedes, however, that this is far from straightforward: “If you figure out the optimal amount of delay for passwords, please let me know!”



We procrastinate, avoiding tasks that need to be accomplished, for many reasons. Sometimes it’s because more pleasurable things catch the eye – but we also have a tendency to prioritise less time-sensitive tasks over those we think of as more important.



You won’t change your password, by and large, till you’ve been hacked

When it comes to passwords – and the risk of not changing them frequently – we are often reminded of the problem, but it just doesn’t feel like a real risk to us. Heffernan believes you have to fall victim to a crime to lose your misguided sense of invincibility. “You won’t change your password, by and large, till you’ve been hacked, had your ID stolen or a system upgrade forces you to do so. We put these things off because they are boring and yield no rewards. We are drawn to do things that have rewards – they’re interesting, fun, make us feel useful, or are good to get off our plates.”



He likens changing passwords to brushing your teeth: it’s a preventive measure we only take if it is routine, something we have learned to do without thinking. But it is better than the alternative. “Going to the dentist is probably the equivalent of having your ID stolen: painful, turgid and worth avoiding.”



But procrastination has its place too. Partnoy believes taking time to deliberate, consider all the angles and not rushing headlong into things is key to making good decisions. “The longer we can wait, the better,” he says.



Except, of course, when the stakes are so high that you stand to lose everything you’ve worked for by not acting. That’s when doing the important project before the urgent task makes total sense. Now, what was the name of that password manager?

