It’s seven o'clock in the morning, and salad greens need picking. I grab the kitchen shears and a blue plastic washtub, wedge my toes into the rubber clogs and head out to the garden, the screen door snapping at my heels. As I navigate my way through the maze of rectangular raised beds -- wooden boxes filled with lettuce, kinky kales, mustard greens, poppies, peas, carrots, herbs, edible flowers and potatoes -- young magpies twitch their tail feathers in judgment from the spruce trees above.

With a clip and a twist, I toss the leaves into the washtub, harvesting mustard greens, then a few lettuce locks, before moving on to a row of Russian red kale. Not every leaf is worthy. My husband and I host dinner cruises on our boat, so I select only the showcase leaves. Within minutes, I fall into a rhythm: Pull, clip, toss. Pull, clip, toss.

After 20 years of cheerleading and pleading with plants to grow in my tiny Kodiak Island plots of volcanic ash, compost and seaweed, I've come to accept my garden as more than soil that yields food and beauty. It is my teacher, and its lessons universal. I've learned patience while waiting three weeks for carrot seeds to germinate, and the value of "slow gardening" by picking lettuce leaves unhurriedly so as not to harm innocent bystanders. As Ecknath Easwaran reminds us in his book, "Love Never Faileth," "Hurry makes for tension, insecurity, inefficiency, and superficial living."

But on that morning, my lesson was as subtle as a drop of water, yet as large as the ocean.

I pinch the tip of a kale leaf between my thumb and forefinger. Pulling it downward, I snip the base and feed it to the washtub. The sun warms my cheek. What a nice day to be alive. I stay with the rhythm: Pull, clip, toss.

So, about tonight... How about a rhubarb-chocolate cake for dessert? Where did I see that recipe? Need eggs, though. Pull, clip, toss. I hear that chocolate's good for you. Did I read that online? Tomorrow I should clean out my email inbox, go for a walk or ride my bike. Pull, clip, toss. Alby used to ride his bike. Maybe he sold it for rent money. Older brother, how are you? Dear God, help him. Heroin addiction. Damn. Pull, clip, toss.

A magpie clucks. I freeze, staring at the shears in my hand. The washtub is full, though I can’t remember filling it.

We’re told that women are particularly gifted at multi-tasking, accomplishing more work in the same amount of time. But is that truly efficient, or is it wasted time, a lifestyle driven by the sheer momentum of modern life?

“Doing more than one thing at a time divides attention and fragments consciousness,” says Easwaran, a successful writer, lecturer, and professor of English literature when he came to the U.S. on a Fulbright exchange program in 1959.

Author of over 20 books, Easwaran advocated the practice of one-pointed attention as a way to train the mind and free it from tension. “A great deal of psychological stress comes from the rush and hurry of a turbulent mind which jumps recklessly to unwarranted conclusions, rushes to judgments, and often is going too fast to see events and people as they truly are.”

The magpie’s comment breaks my mindless harvesting, as if yanking on the reins of a runaway chariot. My mind stops hopping from one subject to another -- desiring, worrying, hoping, fearing, planning, defending, rehearsing, criticizing.

Multi-tasking is a modern-day Siren’s song, luring us to eat breakfast and read the newspaper at the same time; except you don’t get the most from either activity.

“Everything you do should be worthy of your full attention,” says Easwaran. “When the mind is one-pointed it will be secure, free from worry and tension, and capable of the concentration that is the mark of genius in any field.” One-pointedness endowed Einstein, Beethoven and Gandhi with the ability to accomplish great things.

Gandhi believed it was necessary for thought to be under complete control of the will and that involuntary thought is a habit of the mind. “Curbing of thought, therefore, means curbing of the mind which is even more difficult to curb than the wind,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Nevertheless, the existence of God within makes even control of the mind possible.

“Let no one think that it is impossible because it is difficult. It is the highest goal, and it is no wonder that the highest effort should be necessary to attain it.”

At first, your efforts to refrain from reading the paper while eating breakfast or not allowing your mind to fret over the future while gardening may seem trivial. Yet when applied throughout the day, these actions add up, much like a single drop of water contributes to the whole ocean. “A one-pointed mind,” Easwaran told his students, “is slow and sound, which gives it immense resilience under stress. With a mind like this, we always have a choice in how we respond to life around us.”

Pull, clip, toss…focus.