low-hanging fruit

noun

low-hang·​ing fruit ˈlō-ˈhaŋ-iŋ- 

: the obvious or easy things that can be most readily done or dealt with in achieving success or making progress toward an objective

Maria and Victor have about three months' living expenses set aside. That's actually pretty good …. But I urged them to do better …. Looking at their monthly expenses, we found a few pieces of low-hanging fruit: Two hundred dollars a month on clothes? I don't think so. Another $155 for hair and manicures? Denied.

—Suze Orman

—often used with pick

As the writers and producers sat down in spring 2007 to draw the outlines of Season 7, they knew, Mr. Gordon said, that most of the low-hanging fruit in the action genre had already been picked.

—Edward Wyatt

When business types talk about picking low-hanging fruit, they don't mean, heaven forbid, doing actual physical labor. They mean finding easy solutions.

—Allan Sloan

Examples of low-hanging fruit in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But a company has tens of thousands of people doing repetitive work, which is the low-hanging fruit. —Steve Banker, Forbes, 9 Oct. 2024

But then what happens is that there’s so much low-hanging fruit to address. —Byallie Garfinkle, Fortune, 1 Oct. 2024

After picking the low-hanging fruit of Trump’s bizarre rantings, Stewart turned serious toward the end of the segment, especially as Trump tried to weasel out of his responsibility for the Jan. 6 insurrection during the debate and blamed Nancy Pelosi. —Carly Thomas, The Hollywood Reporter, 11 Sep. 2024

There is low-hanging fruit in areas where federal coordination could encourage a fairer and more open national economy. —Matthias Matthijs, Foreign Affairs, 19 Apr. 2022

Word History

First Known Use

1909, in the meaning defined above