The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: “Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.”
In that sense, it might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic and the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point.
And when you are in school often you are given tasks which seem to have no discernible purpose or meaning other than perhaps to take you off your parent's hands while they go make a living.
From: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/10101....