This is a story about a simple bus driver from Santorini. He taught me how to prevent artificial intelligence from taking over the world – and from stealing your job.

It all started on my last summer vacation: My wife and I traveled to Naxos, the largest island of the Cyclades, located in the South of Greece.

As Naxos doesn’t have an airport, we had to fly to the neighboring island Santorini and continue our travel from there. Arrived at the Santorini airport, we went to the bus station to catch our bus which would take us to our hotel for the night.

Our bus driver was already waiting for us, next to his 1980s bus, chatting to one of his colleagues. He had a notable figure: About 6,2 feet tall, strong physique, dark curly hair, and the obligatory hairy chest you’d expect from a greek male. I guessed him around the age of 50.

He greeted every single passenger personally, then our bus journey started.

I have to be honest here: I started my blog 3 months ago, and it still overwhelms me.

The problem is easily summarized – There is too much to do, and not enough time.

Writing content, increasing web traffic, networking with other bloggers, working on blog design, participating in social media – just to name a few.

With all these different activities in mind, it’s hard to get things done. It seems that I enter a circle without getting actual results. Often times, my typical daily blog routine looks like this:

In my last blog post, I have introduced two contrary success strategies – pushing towards success versus pulling success.

I have analyzed why the pull strategy is far more suitable for living a successful life without much stress. The pull-concept, however, has only been touched upon by sketching a few solution approaches and examples.

But this blog post will go much deeper than that. You will learn how to design your life, or alternatively some aspects of it, around the pull strategy.

Before we go any further, I want to make clear that I’m not an expert on the pull-based lifestyle. I’m just bored with the conventional „push-forward-under-any-circumstance“ way of life.

I am convinced that there has to be a more effortless and profound way to go about goals, in every aspect of life.

This is my attempt to break it down for you.

„Work hard, play hard“, „Life is a grind“, „Just keep going“, „Sleep when you’re dead“.

We all have heard these motivational quotes.

It’s the mantra of our generation, and we don’t question it. This situation is no coincidence as we’ve been taught this simple mindset since our early childhood. Teachers, parents, and friends have bombarded us with the same message:

„Push forward, whatever comes in your way.“

But what if those people don’t know any better? What if their own teachers, parents, and friends told them the same old message, day in, day out?

First of all, one thing must be made clear: It’s a great feeling to get things done. Achieving goals is fun, success even addictive.

However, some honesty is also needed – we are all tired. Our bodies, our minds, our families, our economy, and most certainly our environment.

We are tired of pursuing goal after goal. It’s hard to be productive every single day. Also, deep down, we intuitively know that limitless growth is not feasible – at least not in the long run.

And rightly so, there are a number of issues with the conventional approach of relentlessly pushing forward in life.