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

There was not a clear answer from Musk and Ramaswamy on that, the member said, but the takeaway was that there was low-hanging fruit — such as instituting a federal hiring freeze at some agencies. —Emily Brooks, The Hill, 5 Dec. 2024

Engineering a global South strategy with the G-20 at its center starts with low-hanging fruit: avoiding incendiary remarks and inflammatory policies that alienate would-be partners. —Leslie Vinjamuri, Foreign Affairs, 15 Nov. 2024

Buying Poor-Quality Equipment When minimizing startup costs, many entrepreneurs see store equipment as low-hanging fruit. —Shaun Lewis, Forbes, 31 Oct. 2024

Disinformation and email hacks are now considered low-hanging fruit. —Sam Sabin, Axios, 29 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1909, in the meaning defined above