Low Hanging Fruit
My last post was about buzz words, and so is this one.
However, this one is more about what happens when buzzwords come home to roost. Erin and I have two apple trees and one pear tree in our yard. So far we’ve just been picking up rotting fruit from the ground and feeling about the same for wasting this free fruit.
I recently checked out some online resources about how to know when pear’s are ripe. Interestingly, you don’t let pears ripen on the tree, you pick them before they are ripe and let them ripen inside. I had our first ripe pear tonight for a snack.
As I was picking pears before dinner I remembered the cliché we used a lot at work, “low hanging fruit.” Having actually picked fruit from a tree I now have a first hand view of the metaphor.
I still think you should say something like, let’s do the easy and cheap stuff instead of saying “low hanging fruit” but I have a better appreciation of the phrase.

I prefer the phase “go for the easy wins!” (a phrase I commonly hear used interchangeably with “go for the low hanging fruit” around here). It’s saves me from having to utter an extra syllable of jargon. I love the concept of doing easy stuff.
Dave
August 27, 2008 at 3:21 pm