I agree about doing what works for you. I also did a full IR course, starting with 30 hours in the sim. I had quite a different experience of IR flying. After about 4 sessions/6 hours we had covered precision and non-precision approaches on both one and two engines, holds and hold entries and general handling. The instructor said we'd covered everything and was ready to do it all again in the aircraft, but unfortunately "the rules" said we had to do another 24 hours in the sim, so we just flew exam profile after exam profile... It seemed to me at the time that I would have been better off doing that in a real plane and logging the hours.