I am sure bose-x is probably right.
I think the most important is to get the theory out of the way first - that really helped me limit the number of hours in the plane.
Personally I don't think I could have done more than about an hour and a half to two hours a day. I found the approaches to be quite taxing, and reflection time to be important. I also needed some time to go over plates. Due to work commitments I flew once a week, and had to cancel a couple of weeks due to (very) low clouds, and CB in the vicinity. So I let that span over I believe 11 or 12 weeks and passed with around 16hours of instruction time, 13hours of which were under hood / actual IMC.
Although most people learn better / faster when everything is bunched up (bose-x) I actually found that taking my time and revisiting elements over a longer period made me much more confident.
With regards to your first question, a lot of people say "Oh no - don't use the rating, it is for emergencies only!" (I quote a CFI at a club where I did some training) but I argue my point that if I don't use it - then I'll be completely out of practice when I actually need to use it (which was later backed up by the instructor who taught me the IMC and another who taught me my night rating at a different club).
I do use my rating, I took off just before the solar eclipse with a cloud base of 500ft, and 2500m visibility (along with quite a few others). Came on top of the clouds at around 2000ft, and came back in to land vectored onto the ILS broke through at around 600ft dead-on the centreline of the runway - too easy!
The only frustrating thing is that it is only valid in the UK. I was grounded for 3 days in Brittany due to low cloud. I could see the edges of the sun, and there were reports of being VFR on top at around 1500ft on all 3 days!! That's why I am now working through my ground exams for the full EASA/IR!
Hope you have fun flying in IMC!
