These days, it's not uncommon to have dozens and dozens of passwords for various sites and services. If you're using different passwords for each service it can be basically impossible to hold all the passwords in your memory.
Some people keep a book with their passwords written down, and are occasionally mocked for doing so because if the book is lost or stolen, so are their accounts.
Others keep a digital password manager. These passwords aren't hashed: a user can log in and see all their saved passwords.
The best solution (assuming we're only using passwords) is to have unique, strong passwords memorized for each service, but that is implausible for the typical person and the volume of passwords someone needs.
Which of the following is the current best practice for a high number of passwords? Consider that the user needs to access these accounts from potentially several computers.
Use a handful of passwords that you can remember and have several services share a password. (For example, three unique passwords over twelve services)
Use a digital storage mechanism for storing passwords that can be accessed on logging in
Keep a physical book of written passwords. Obviously it can't be stolen digitally, but can be physically stolen or misplaced, and recovering from a lost book is very hard.
I'm assuming the person in question is keeping everyday information important to them (email, bank account password, so on) but not necessarily being specifically targeted by someone with resources. Any of these practices will probably fail against someone staging a coordinated attack.
