Heh, well, insight practice is known to be more bumpy than smooth and more destabilizing than stabilizing. If your primary goal for now is getting good at concentration (which helps a lot during the dark night), then you may want to stick with the concentration practices for a while before you start the insight practices. On the other hand, concentration alone won't give you any enlightenment, so if you want enlightenment sooner rather than later, practicing both concentration and insight is the way to go.
If you want to look more at using breath counting to get to the first stages of concentration practice, it might be cool to check out Kenneth Folk's advice on getting to access concentration:
Link here.Kenneth's writing style is a bit different from Daniel's, and it's often helpful to hear two different perspectives on meditation or anything dealing with the "inner world" of the mind. If you familiarize yourself with both Kenneth's instructions for getting to access concentration and jhana, along with the relevant sections on concentration from MCTB, you'll be in a great position to make good progress in concentration.