Flashcards Friday! How to Deal with Overwhelm During Tax Season, Math! Science! History!™

Gabrielle Birchak/ June 5, 2026/ Modern History/ 0 comments

It’s Flash­cards Fri­day at Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! I’m Gabrielle Bir­chak, your host. On Tues­day, we talked about the his­to­ry of tax­es, from ancient levies to mod­ern sys­tems, and how tax­es have shaped gov­ern­ments, rev­o­lu­tions, and every­day life. Today, we’re stay­ing with that theme, but on a more relat­able level.

This Flash­cards Fri­day is about some­thing many of us are feel­ing right now: How to deal with over­whelm when you’re work­ing on your taxes.

Tax sea­son can feel like the per­fect storm: num­bers, dead­lines, and that lurk­ing fear of “What if I mess this up?”
Even if you like math, tax math is dif­fer­ent because it’s soaked in emo­tion and uncertainty.

So in this episode, I’m giv­ing you three flash­cards, three prac­ti­cal ideas, to help you get through tax sea­son with a lit­tle more calm, and a lit­tle more self-com­pas­sion. I could learn a thing or two from this pod­cast myself!

Let’s start with what’s hap­pen­ing in your brain when you feel tax overwhelm.

Have you ever opened your tax soft­ware, looked at the first screen, and then imme­di­ate­ly want­ed to close your lap­top and go reor­ga­nize your sock draw­er? I know I did…I mean, have.

But that’s not lazi­ness. That’s your brain qui­et­ly wav­ing a lit­tle white flag.

Cog­ni­tive sci­en­tists tell us that over­whelm hap­pens when your work­ing mem­o­ry, your brain’s tem­po­rary “desk space”, gets over­loaded. [pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]​ When that space is clut­tered, it’s hard­er to think clear­ly, remem­ber steps, or make decisions.

Now add finan­cial stress on top of that. Stud­ies on finan­cial anx­i­ety show that mon­ey wor­ries can hijack your men­tal band­width and make it hard­er to focus, plan, and even sleep. This is some­times called a “band­width tax.” Your brain is so busy wor­ry­ing that it has less capac­i­ty left for every­thing else. 

So when you sit down to do tax­es, you’re not just enter­ing num­bers. You’re jug­gling forms, rules, dead­lines, and fears about the future, all at once. No won­der your brain wants to escape.

The good news is that even though you can’t make tax­es van­ish, you can make them more man­age­able. Let’s start with flash­card num­ber one: break down com­plex­i­ty like a data scientist.

FLASHCARD #1: Break complexity Like a Data Scientist

In oth­er words, break it into chunks.

Think about ear­ly data sci­en­tists and com­put­er pio­neers, like the math­e­mati­cians who first fig­ured out how to han­dle huge amounts of infor­ma­tion with very lim­it­ed com­put­ing pow­er.
They couldn’t process every­thing at once, so they broke big prob­lems into small, mod­u­lar tasks.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]​

You can treat your tax­es the same way. Instead of say­ing, “I’m going to do my tax­es tonight”, which is enor­mous and vague, try break­ing it into very small, spe­cif­ic steps.

For exam­ple:

• Today’s job is only to col­lect all my income forms. That’s it.
• Tomorrow’s job is to gath­er deductible expens­es, such as receipts, char­i­ty dona­tions, or busi­ness costs.
• The next day’s job: enter just one cat­e­go­ry into your tax software.

Each lit­tle step frees up work­ing mem­o­ry because your brain can hold only one clear task at a time.[pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]​
And each time you fin­ish a step, you get a tiny sense of com­ple­tion, a lit­tle dopamine hit, that makes the next step feel more doable.[amen­clin­ics]​

If you like analo­gies, think of it this way: You’re not try­ing to eat the whole tax tofu ele­phant in one bite. You’re tak­ing one small fork­ful at a time. Yes, I said tofu. We don’t eat elephants.

So for flash­card num­ber one, here’s your mantra. Just say, “I don’t do tax­es. I do one small tax task at a time.”

Now on to flash card num­ber 2, use num­bers to name them to tame your anxiety.

Flashcard #2: Use Numbers to Tame Your Anxiety

That sounds very math-nerdy, so let me explain. When we think about mon­ey, the brain’s alarm sys­tem, the amyg­dala, tends to light up. Finan­cial stress has been linked to high­er lev­els of stress hor­mones, like cor­ti­sol, and can make it hard­er to think clear­ly or sleep well.
In oth­er words, your brain can go into “dan­ger mode” before you even open the calculator.

So instead of try­ing to ignore that feel­ing, try to mea­sure it.

The next time you feel that knot in your stom­ach about tax­es, try this experiment:

1. Ask your­self: “What am I afraid will hap­pen?”
   Maybe it’s: “I’ll owe way more than I expect,” or “I’ll make a mis­take and get in trouble.”
2. Then give that fear a num­ber.
   Ask: “On a scale from 0 to 100, how like­ly will this happen?”

Maybe your first instinct is, “Oh, it’s 90%, I’m doomed.” That’s okay. Write down that number.

Now, look at your evidence:

• Have you been care­ful with your records in past years?
• Are you using soft­ware or a pro­fes­sion­al who dou­ble-checks your return?
• Have you ever actu­al­ly got­ten into seri­ous trou­ble from an hon­est fil­ing mistake?

Update your num­ber based on that evi­dence. Maybe it drops from 90% to 40%, or even 20%.

What you’re doing is a kind of Bayesian think­ing, start­ing with a fear-based guess, and then adjust­ing it as you look at real data. [pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih]​ This moves you from raw emo­tion toward reason.

It doesn’t mag­i­cal­ly erase anx­i­ety, but it gives your brain some­thing con­crete to hold on to.
Your wor­ry goes from “infi­nite and vague” to “mea­sur­able and manageable.”

So for Flash­card num­ber two, your mantra is: “When I’m scared, I put a num­ber on it, then I update that num­ber with real evidence.”

Flashcard #3: Reframe Taxes as Part of a Bigger Story

Mov­ing on to Flash­card num­ber three, remem­ber the sto­ry you’re part of.

On Tues­day, we talked about how tax­es have been around for thou­sands of years, fund­ing roads, armies, tem­ples, schools, and pub­lic projects that bind soci­eties togeth­er. Whether it was grain levies in ancient king­doms or income tax­es in mod­ern democ­ra­cies, tax­es have always been a way of pool­ing resources to build some­thing larg­er than any one per­son. [math­science­his­to­ry]​

When you sit down with your W‑2s or 1099s, it’s easy to see only the headache.
But there’s anoth­er way to look at it.

Your tax return is also a sto­ry of your year:

• The income you earned.
• The caus­es you supported.
• The busi­ness you tried to grow.
• The fam­i­ly you cared for.

It’s not just bureau­cra­cy; it’s a snap­shot of how you par­tic­i­pat­ed in your community’s life.

So instead of think­ing, “Ugh, I have to do my tax­es,” you might exper­i­ment with:
“I am tak­ing stock of a year of my life. I am account­ing for how I con­tributed, what I built, and to assess what I can change, because self-change is good.”

Psy­chol­o­gists have found that when we con­nect stress­ful tasks to a sense of mean­ing or pur­pose, our brains expe­ri­ence less stress and more moti­va­tion. [amen­clin­ics]​
You’re still doing the same forms, but now, they’re con­nect­ed to some­thing bigger.

So for flash card num­ber 3, your mantra is “This isn’t just paper­work. It’s my year, in num­bers and how it con­nects to the peo­ple I love, my ambi­tions, and my per­son­al growth. I’m part of a much big­ger equation.”

Let’s put your three Flash­cards together:

1. Break com­plex­i­ty into chunks.
   You’re not “doing tax­es”; you’re doing one small, clear­ly defined task at a time.
2. Use num­bers to tame anx­i­ety.
   When fear shows up, give it a num­ber, then update that num­ber with real evidence.
3. Remem­ber the big­ger sto­ry.
   Your tax­es are not just a bill; they’re a record of how you par­tic­i­pat­ed in your world this year.

You don’t have to do any of this per­fect­ly. You don’t have to be fear­less. You just have to keep show­ing up in small, man­age­able ways.

If tax sea­son has you over­whelmed this week, you are not alone. Peo­ple have been wrestling with tax oblig­a­tions, and the feel­ings that come with them, for as long as we’ve had civilizations. 

Or to quote from the Life of Bri­an,

“They’ve tak­en every­thing we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers’ fathers.”
Loret­ta: “And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers.”
Reg: “Yeah.”
Loret­ta: “And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.”

You are part of that long human sto­ry of try­ing to make sense of num­bers, respon­si­bil­i­ty, and fair­ness.
That alone is some­thing to be proud of.