The idea behind the Vivanautics website is to provide you with an objective and honest perspective on your life and thereby hopefully to help you make better decisions.
The name Vivanautics comes from two Latin words. The first "vivere", meaning "to live", and the second "nauta", meaning a "sailor". So Vivanautics is the science of how to travel through life. People are all trying to navigate their way through many daunting and difficult choices about what to do and which course to take. Vivanautics is about studying those decisions and trying to assist you in reaching better outcomes.
There is a lot of research into how difficult it is for people to make such decisions. For example, people have trouble creatively thinking up all the different courses of action they have available to them. Likewise, they find it hard to imagine what life will be like if they follow one of these options. Finally, it's often difficult to trade off the various advantages and disadvantages that the options offer.
Consequently, a fear of regret or of the potential loss of what people have already often causes a so called "status quo bias". Instead of taking a decision, we either put it off or decide to leave things the way they are because they are the devil we know. By providing impartial and uncompromising feedback on different aspects of your life, the Vivanautics website is designed to help you understand more clearly where you are, what will happen if you leave things unchanged, and how they might be if you decide to steer in a different direction.
There is growing evidence that there are several areas in people’s lives that contribute significantly to their happiness. Income and money do play a role, but they are not actually top of the list. More powerful drivers of wellbeing include job security and meaning, health and exercise, and relationships and community participation. Accordingly, the Vivanautics site has started out by analysing some of the different aspects of romantic relationships. In the end, some of the most stressful experiences people ever have to live through are separation and divorce and conversely some of the greatest moments of joy and contentment that we enjoy come from being in love.