I tried breaking my tax return into quarters, but I got stuck sooner than I expected

Don't you find that tax returns always end up being a last-minute scramble every year?

You think, 'I wish I could handle this better,' but you somehow manage to finish it, and then it happens all over again the next year... It's a recurring cycle. I was the same way for a long time.

So, I thought, 'Maybe it would be easier if I broke the annual task into four parts,' and on March 31, 2026, I held a co-working session for quarterly accounting.

The part where I got stuck wasn't the bookkeeping itself, but something much earlier in the process.

Opening Zoom, starting with organizing documents

The format is simple. We just open Zoom and everyone works on their own tasks. For the first half, I was mostly alone, and then someone from the same community joined me halfway through.

Before I started, I honestly didn't think it would be that heavy. Since it was only a quarter of the year instead of the whole thing, I figured I could breeze through the bookkeeping. (I was naive at this point.)

Here is what I was actually doing at the start:

• Taking out the 2025 receipts from the organization folder and grouping them together

• Putting the 2026 receipts back in

• Scanning and digitizing payment records from January to March

• Checking where to download bank and credit card statements

...The bookkeeping hasn't even started yet, has it?

Somehow, this part was already taking a huge amount of time.

Even though I should have done it half a month ago, I didn't remember

(In this series, I have written up to this point about how I got through this year's tax return. This is the continuation of that story.)

The most surprising thing was that even though only half a month had passed since the tax return, I had forgotten almost the entire workflow.

Even though I spent so much time on it, I was thinking about it from scratch again.

I had this feeling of, 'Wait, I didn't leave anything behind for myself.'

I suppose right before the filing deadline, I was putting all my energy into just 'getting it done.' I was just silently following the next steps that the AI was giving me.

So, while I did finish, I didn't have anything left in a form I could reproduce on my own.

Having AI walk through it with me was helpful. It really was.

However, I realized that being helped and actually understanding the process well enough to apply it next time are two different things.

As a result, I didn't finish sorting the expenses.

I made progress on sorting bank accounts. I also made progress on sorting sales. But I didn't finish sorting the expenses.

The people who joined me also felt like, 'I didn't finish in a few hours, but I was able to take home the progress I made.' That's about where we landed.

Even a quarter of the work was heavier than I expected. Well, I guess that's to be expected, too.

What was needed before 'breaking it into quarters'

What I learned from trying this is that just dividing it into quarters doesn't automatically make it easier.

What was needed before that was to formalize the process for myself: where the documents are, a list of download links, and the flow for sorting expenses.

Everyone probably knows that daily organization is important. I knew it too (or thought I did).

However, I couldn't see exactly where I would get stuck until I actually tried it.

You know that feeling when you try something and only then realize, 'Oh, so this is where it is.'

There were things I only saw because I tried it.

More than just reaffirming that 'quarterly accounting is important,' the biggest takeaway this time might be realizing that 'trying it once shows you exactly where you get stuck.'

By the next time I do this, I want to have a list of download links and an expense sorting procedure ready. If possible, I'd like to move it closer to a monthly, or even weekly, routine.

It wasn't perfect, but there were things I learned because I tried. I think that was quite significant.

So, that was my experimental note on 'trying it out and getting stuck sooner than expected.'

Just playing around, just playing around~♪