A countdown gives an event urgency without giving it importance.

A countdown manufactures pressure without supplying meaning. The numbers falling create the same physical alertness whether the thing arriving matters enormously or barely at all, which is precisely why the device is used so freely on things that do not deserve it. Urgency is easy to produce and importance is not, so the easier one gets substituted.

When something is presented to you as running out, pause long enough to ask what would actually be lost. Sales, offers, and manufactured windows nearly all collapse under that question. The habit generalises well: separate how fast a thing feels from how much it weighs, and much of the noise in a week loses its grip on you.