There's a popular myth about how you're best off "picking the low hanging fruit" first — whether it's life, investing, rewards, words, crypto or anything that requires an expenditure of effort and energy.

The idea, of course, is that it's easier to get at something that is... well... easily accessible than something that's a lot more complex to understand and benefit from.

Naturally, it makes sense!

And yet, going for this "low hanging fruit" isn't always the optimal solution.

For starters, my experience has invariably been that of the "herd mentality" getting in the way. When almost everyone is trying to get at the "easy money" — so to speak — you also end up with intense competition for those easy benefits... so you might not actually get much, in the end.

I've experienced — first hand — that effect in a wide range of situations.

Consider for example business grants.

You discover that there are some grants available from some institution, which means you can get funding that you don't have to pay back! Sounds like it could be a great thing, and "easy money," right?

However, you're not alone in thinking that and you invariably end up with thousands of people applying to get maybe five grants. In comparison, the not-so-low-hanging fruit involved in getting an actual loan is not nearly as competitive... but it is a lot more work, and it's not free.

But there's an additional "risk" which I have seen happen.

Somebody I knew actually got a $2,000 business development grant... but because they didn't have to pay back the money they ended up spending 80% of it on what I can only describe as "frills and fluff" for the business (and themselves), not actual building.

Here in the Cryptosphere, the "low hanging fruit" often takes the form of airdrops, but 99% of the time we discover that this allegedly "free crypto" we rushed to get doesn't necessarily mean very much. After all, what good is one million free tokens if they are only worth $0.25 if you try to sell them?

There is a different truism in life — which people generally don't like, nearly as much! — which is that "people tend to VALUE something about as much as they had to PAY for it."

It's one of the reasons why — for example — counselors, experts and advisors almost unanimously refuse to offer "free advice."

Even if you do dispense free advice or counseling to someone, the outcome is typically that those who had to pay for their sessions paid more attention and derived more benefit than those who got "free advice."

In investing and crypto, we often call it "having skin in the game."

I have seen this "relative value paradigm" in effect, first hand, in a consulting situation. Even while offering the exact same advice, the consultant offering services for $200 an hour was broadly perceived to "know more and have better advice" than the consultant offering (the SAME, remember) services for $75 an hour.

And chances are that those buying the $200 advice were more successful as well... not because the advice was any better, but because they were more deeply invested in applying it.

Of course — just to appease those who might be thinking "That's not true! I wouldn't do that!" — there are exceptions, most of which represent those with a deeper understanding of applied psychology and their own motivations.

In a sense, you could argue that those folks are "elevating" that low hanging fruit through deeper understanding.

Then again, I could just be blowing smoke out my a$$!

Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!

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