No matter how well you plan your business, at some point life will get in the way. Perhaps your car breaks down. Or perhaps your child gets hurt and needs to be taken to hospital. Or maybe your sister is having a baby. Whatever the case, the simple fact is that life often doesn’t always turn out the way we expect it to.

What can you do? How do you keep your business going when life gets in the way?

Take a Deep Breath

Start by taking a deep breath and giving yourself a little space to relax. Yes, it’s important to keep the wheels turning – but it’s also important to give yourself a little space. Don’t beat yourself up over having to give your life priority.

Cut Down All But the Essential

Look through your task list for the upcoming days and weeks. What can you cut out? What projects aren’t essential?

Cut down your workload to just the bare bones. Cut out any business expanding efforts. Do just enough to maintain your client base and keep your business running – no more.

Outsource as Much as Possible

Outsource as many tasks as you can to someone you trust. Business owners, especially home business owners, are often hesitant to outsource. If you have to pay someone $25 an hour to keep things running in your absence, that can seriously cut into your profits.

In normal circumstances, that’s certainly true. In an emergency situation, however, paying someone a respectable hourly rate to keep your business going is a wise investment.

Find someone who understands your business model and all the tools your business needs to keep running, and ask them to run your company for you for the days or weeks you need to take off.

Work When You Can Fit It In

Don’t just drop your company entirely. Instead, do as much work as you can when you can fit it in. For example, if you took your child to hospital, bring your laptop with you. When you’ve got an hour or two in the waiting room, do a bit of work. If your car broke down, again, use the waiting time productively.

An emergency will almost never take up your entire 16 waking hours. Use the time you have left over to take care of the most important aspects of your business.

These tips will help you put your business on a bare-bones life support system. Your business certainly won’t grow, but it also won’t shrink. Dealing with emergencies is toughest when you don’t have a contingency plan. Once you know who you can turn to and how to respond to emergencies, these situations become a lot less stressful.