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

However, the lack of addressing low-hanging fruit, AAA hype clashing with reality, and Apple failing to provide a complete gaming experience threaten to undermine the progress that’s been made. —Craig Grannell, WIRED, 4 Nov. 2024

Chandra Wallace: With respect to comments and changes that people would like to see already, are there any topics that are low-hanging fruit? —Tax Notes Staff, Forbes, 29 Oct. 2024

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

Word History

First Known Use

1909, in the meaning defined above