tanja(at)tanjalau.com

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Bern, Switzerland

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Tanja Lau / News

Ready for Take-off

Our two-month sabbatical in Bali is just around the corner - and if my family had not been stopping me, I would have been fully packed weeks ago 🙂 I guess how we pack and prepare for trips says a lot about our personality and I loved chatting about this with many people in my network in the past couple of weeks. Just for fun, I tried to condense the patterns I spotted into 7 packing archetypes.  1 - MAMA BEAR Main goal: make sure everyone on the trip is fully taken care ofPacking strategy:starts washing and shopping at least a week in advancepacks for everyone in the family, including pre-planning what shoe size the kids are going to have during the trip in four monthspacks enough food to feed...

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Deep Learnings

I consider myself a fast learner - but there are a few things that took me over two decades to sink in. I call those deep learnings. The ones that you can hear a thousand times from other people, but you will never truly get until you live a lot, mess up and get up again. Until you integrate them into every fiber of your being. And once you do, it’s impossible to unsee them. They become part of your fundamental believe system and aspirations. You truly get them - which does not necessarily mean that you master or always apply them. On the contrary: You realize how far you’ve come and how much work is still laying ahead of you. This is deep learning....

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Go Nuts

I don’t know about you, but I’m furious. At least a couple of times per week. Sometimes it’s the kids who just don’t want to go to sleep. Sometimes it’s the husband who dares to take a nap while the dishes are procrastinating in the sink. Sometimes it’s the polished Linkedin world or the fact that it’s always the same five parents who volunteer for any kind of school activity. Most of the time, however, it’s me being furious at myself. For not sleeping enough, for eating too much chocolate, for not taking the time to practice the piano, for moving 450 km away from my family. When I ignore my rage, it often turns into envy. I start feeling like I’m surrounded by people who...

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Messed Up

There are those days in my female cycle where the world looks especially dark and twisted to me. Every month around this time, I feel like my life is a total desaster and everything is going to hell. And since I don't want to drag you down that hole, I did my best to surrender to this feeling and still give it a fun twist. And this is the (not so serious) result:  10 ways to successfully mess up your life forever Step 1: Surround yourself with boring and negative people (think: Grinch and Wednesday Addams...

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Speak Up

Last week, I finally had the chance to issue my Swiss ID. It took me close to a year to complete all the paperwork and do the oral exam where the lovely police lady casually opened with “Are you associated with the red light district?”, followed by a series of questions about Swiss history, politics and typical instruments (which is the only category I partially failed in since I was not able to recall the “Handörgeli”…). Fun fact: I actually had to do the entire exam twice because apparently the police IT system in Switzerland is even more buggy than the Balinese visa application process, and since the lady forgot to save any of my answers, once we were ready to conclude, she realized everything...

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Good-bye 2018, Hello 2019 – Moving on.

Good-bye siroop! Finding closure What a ride it has been. After joining this audacious company as one of the very first employees in 2015, I decided to quit my position as Head of Product at siroop at the end of 2017. I had dedicated all my passion and a considerable chunk of my time to building this new marketplace in Switzerland. Over 200 siroopies, hundreds of merchants and more than 350'000 customers had joined us along the way. However, after commuting three hours a day, managing daycare logistics and organizing a wedding, I realized it was time to get my priorities straight and spend more quality time with my family. Leaving siroop was hard. I had found wonderful friends, sparring partners and talented team mates there. We fought together, we made...

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