Mnemonics and their use in your life, especially in Acronym format

[DarkestDarkness]

I am curious as to how much people actually use acronym-style mnemonics in their life, in a format such as, I don't know, "LAB = Limbs Always Bend". I just made that one up as an example, since I just realised a bit ago that I actually never use them at all, and have never felt able to use them, though my dad certainly did try to teach me how to use them when I was still at school. I understand the principles involved and why they are useful even if I didn't as much at the time, it's just that I've never really grabbed on to the concept and ultimately found other ways of memorising things, including just being more confident in my memory or focusing more at the time of actually receiving novel information. Part of me wonders if my lack of use for these has to do with language or with something else; English seems to use acronyms far more often than I would do in my own native language, presumably because in English there are acronyms that make up either an existing or a novel pronounceable word, even for such things as companies or departments and so on. I feel that one reason I haven't really used these much myself is because I always thought it would take a lot of time to work out what a specific acronym did stand for, an issue that I do realise now would be a non-issue by frequent use of whatever the aid was. So, I am mostly curious as to how people that do use these acronym mnemonics have come about to use them in the first place, and how they dealt with any potential issues from using them.

[Sivason]

I often have things I want to remind myself during the day at work, but do not want others to read my phrases and wonder about them. I write down the first letter of each word and post it somewhere as if it is a password to something. I have one that say something like D.N.T.A.P.A.A.!!!02/15 It looks like a password. It reminds me, Do Not Talk About Politics At All and the 02/15 was the minimum date I must be strict about this to.

[FryingMan]

Waking life, no, but I've used them in lucid dreaming. I used the phrase B.E. S.T.R.O.N.G. to help remember my "I just got lucid" ritual/checklist, dream goals, stabilize, etc. In waking life I've used mnemonic-style rhyming technique to remember specific day experiences for later review in the evening.