I want the same button to wake up (reset) and put it to sleep but this is hard if the button is tied directly to the rst pin. My thought was to read and store a value in EEPROM so tell the chip what mode we were in so it can perform the counter action. For example, on RST if the value is 0 the chip should wake up and do things. It would then set the value to 1. If the button is pressed again, the chip resets, reads there is a 1 and now just puts the chip into deep sleep after setting the value back to 0. Rinse, repeat.
Does this make sense? Will this work? Is there a better/easier way?
yes
,yes
,impossible to answer without a definition of "better" and "easier"