Some tips about counting from past experience:

  • If you lose track of the count, that's okay. Nobody actually cares about the count; the goal is to make you focus on your breath. Just start at 1.
  • Don't make the counting too complicated, so you keep on focusing on the breath and not on doing math; once you get at 10, go back to 1.

These are super good tips! Thanks lucidiot!

I'll add that you should in fact expect to lose count at some point. It's gonna happen. Start over again at 1.