In Afrikaans we have the (slightly old fashioned): Voor die hand liggend.

Something like: It is right in front of your hands.

Stemming from the equivalent Dutch “voor de hand liggend”.

And I would not have a negative connotation with it in the right context. (E.g “Een tabel is een voor de hand liggende structuur om data te representeren” - a table is an ‘obvious’ manner to represent data)

I think plenty of other comments have made good suggestions but that this clearly takes the cake for me!

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that German has a great word for this, although I admit when I started reading your comment I expected it to be a compound word.

I quite like the literal translation too!

We have the same compound word in Norwegian, with same kind of meaning:

Nærliggende

> 2. som naturlig faller en i tanken ; som det er naturlig å gripe til

(Aside from also having a literal meaning of being in physical proximity.)

Translated:

“Which naturally comes to mind; which it is natural to resort to.”

https://naob.no/ordbok/n%C3%A6rliggende

This Norwegian word would not have naturally come to mind for me though, if it wasn’t for GP mentioning the German equivalent of it. It is not a word I usually use myself. But I do hear others use it now and then.

It is a compound word. Nahe (close by) liegend (lying).

That word sounds like you’re saying “near the ground”.

A similar English expression might be "low-hanging fruit", but again for some reason we've attached negative connotations to it. I don't know why English keeps doing that. It feels so cynical.

It's not a fault of the language, it's the culture. "Average" and "mediocre" both have negative connotations in vernacular use as well, even though they're normal and should be expected. If we expect excellence and world-shaking performance as the standard, good enough will not be good enough.

I don't think "low hanging fruit" has negative connotations attached to it.

The only negative sentiment tangentially associated with it is that when it's exhausted, further progress slows down.

Or "right in front of your face". Though that's used with and without negative connotations.

It's more like "nearby, on the ground".

Yeah, I think saying "near lying" or "close to lying" would be less confusing. Also that is actually the order in the German word also! Because it consists of 2 words written as 1.