Low Hanging Fruit

Many of us can feel overwhelmed the minute that we go into work.   It can feel like there’s an endless amount of stuff that needs to be done and not enough time to do it all!

The prevailing wisdom is to “eat the frog”, which is to do the hardest thing first throughout the day so that it comes off your plate first.  After all, it feels good to go after the difficult things first when you are ideally at your most clear headed in the mornings.  That’s not a bad idea and I’ve tried that method before.

But for me, I tend to do the opposite, which is to reach for the “low hanging fruit” first.  If I need to file something in my computer system, I do that instead.  If I need to write a new email to a prospective customer, I do that first.  These small wins give me more momentum throughout the day so that I can eventually work on more complicated tasks.

It’s kind of counterproductive, because sometimes I feel like I’m the most efficient in the afternoons rather than in the mornings.

Sometimes, when we feel like we are battling inertia, we should just think about reaching for the low hanging fruit.  Even if it’s something as mundane as rolling out of bed and brushing your teeth first.  Or just making your bed.  These little wins can help snowball you into doing more fruitful and productive things throughout the day.

Give yourself a pat on the back once in awhile and realize that you can indeed live a productive life if you just take the small wins on a daily basis. 

Sometimes, when I’m planning a grand trip with my loved ones, I get a bit too overwhelmed with the entire journey.  I start to worry about the granular things like booking the train tickets and finding the right hotel at the right location.  In these cases, I just take a step back and try to do the easy things first.  Maybe watch a YouTube video about the area that I’m traveling to.  Or just researching a small section of the day.

When I’m preparing a speech, I similarly try to take it one step at a time.  Come down with a couple of key points that I want to convey to the audience and then just free write to see what comes out of my mind, not worrying about the semantics or the structure or how “correct” it should be.

Sometimes, when we grab that low hanging fruit, it charges us up to have a more productive rest of the day. 

I’m personally hoping that these trade negotiations between the USA and China go well this weekend in Switzerland, because it directly affects my family business.  I hope that they can come out with some sort of grand trade deal in a matter of days, but of course that is not realistic to expect from an initial visit.

A more reasonable result would be that both sides look for low hanging fruit that they can grab to score easy wins for their base and find ways to de-escalate the tension in the room that has pervaded for the past month.

In this case, perhaps China can offer to buy more American products – such as agriculture and energy.  And perhaps the USA can lower its trade tariffs to a more reasonable level because of that. 

Both sides have issues that they are more willing to concede at, and I think those are good places to start the negotiation so that it gets the momentum moving in the right direction.

I must admit that I feel relatively better than I did a month ago, when the trade war was operating to its fullest extent.  I know there’s a long way to go, but I am optimistic that both sides will continue to thaw and that there will be reasonable de-escalation coming out of this weekend, which would then hopefully give rise to better economic sentiment across the globe.

But putting the world changing negotiations aside, even little wins like making your bed or brushing your teeth can help put you into a better frame of mind for the rest of the day.  These things that you don’t even think twice about are good keystone habits to help build your day.

There are lots of low hanging fruit that we can reach throughout the day and it looks different for everybody.  For some, it could be sending out that email, or writing a draft, or perhaps making a quick cold call to a prospective client.  It can be making your bed or brushing your teeth or even starting out the day with a hot cup of coffee.  What’s easy to do is different for everybody since everyone’s skill set is so diverse.

So next time, when you’re feeling overwhelmed with a mountain of tasks that don’t seem to come down anytime soon, just try to aim for the easiest thing that you can think of and see how accomplishing that task makes you feel.  Hopefully, it will help you with more sustenance to get through the day and provide a sense of deserved completion.