I have been playing less than a year for now. The first months I played much less than now. About 20-40 minutes a day, but later I started playing more and more and on some days it's even 4 hours a day, but that happens kinda rearly. Mostly I'm just playing at the start, sometimes coming up with stuff I found good enought and I play it multiple times to remember it. When it's done or I can't make any new stuff I just Play my earlier stuff or do some technique training, like trying to perfect my barre chords (the 2nd and 3rd strings still buzz a little when my hand is getting tired) or practicing smooth picking, as I like to call it. Picking witout any buzz or unneeded pull off's when releasing my fingers from frets. Thats pretty hard when doing arps. Because I place my finger under each other and then it's more difficult.
I rearly train my ear by learning songs, but I have learned some riffs. I reacently learned some classical pieces from a game soundtrack (game called 'Warcraft III') There were some big intervals but I did it. I found that learning classical music is easyer for me. Than some slow rock or blues solos, altought those classical pieces were pretty slow, easy enough for me.