Hey there,
I have two conflicting ideas in my mind before meditating. I have this idea of single pointed focus to the exclusion of thoughts, ie push the thoughts away/ ignore the thoughts / pay no attention to them and just keep focusing on the object or as daniel says stick to your object like a rabid dog until AC. And then on the other hand theres this idea of allowing the mind to relax to its natural state, very effortlessly, very much like your doing nothing. I prefer the former, if the two are actually exclusive. o.O
I've got some good tips for you on this specifically! First of all, if you're pushing thoughts away, that means you're focusing on them and not the object of meditation. The best thing you can do is simply not worry about thoughts at all. They will come and go quite a lot, and if you're trying to push them away, you're never going to spend any time observing the object of meditation. Think of it like this, how much "concentration" do you need to watch television? Have you ever had someone get mad at you because you were so engrossed in a TV show you didn't even realize they were talking to you? This is essentially what you're trying to do with jhana. You don't have to struggle with thoughts while watching TV, you just do it and you get drawn in. Later on you might say to yourself, "wow, I was really zoned out there..." lol.
In terms of sticking to the object, I have a weird analogy that might give you a good picture of how to do it. Imagine you're a train robber and you have this little cart you're sitting on. The cart is perfectly still and the train is going by you very quickly. This train is the object of your meditation, and you somehow have to get your little cart up to the speed of the train to stay with it. It'd probably be a bad idea to try jumping onto the train because it would just run you over - this is what happens if you just bear down and CONCENTRATE. Instead, you're going to shoot grapples at the train and let it slowly bring you up to speed. The first grapple you shoot will break pretty quickly, but hey, now you're moving the tiniest little bit. So you shoot another one, and it breaks right away again, but you're moving a little more. Now, a common thing to do is to scold yourself. "Why can't I just concentrate? It shouldn't be this hard!" But you ARE concentrating with each little moment you're on the object. Trying to stop your thoughts or getting frustrated with your efforts is a bit like trying to figure out why the grapple broke. If you start investigating the broken grapples, you'll lose the little bit of speed you already got and have to start over. So the best thing you can do is just allow distractions to happen and, whenever you can, shoot a grapple out to the meditation object and let your awareness speed up a little bit. Nothing with get you into jhana faster than being relaxed and accepting of distractions. The less you're worried about being distracted, the less distracting those distractions will be. This includes being excited as well, excitement isn't a distraction - trying not to be excited IS a distraction.
Also, It's quite possible to do jhana with a stream of thoughts running through your head. It's usually called "soft" jhana, and it's a good stepping stone to "hard" jhana because you can use the jhana factors as your object of concentration. Don't worry too much about the levels of concentration and whatever, I can tell you I've never had the same jhana meditation twice. Your concentration and relaxation will always be at different levels, so if you go in with the mindset, each time, of allowing the process to unfold how it will, you'll be much better off.
As to the object to use, my personal recommendation would be full body awareness. I've always used this and I think it makes the most sense because the first two jhanas are very physical. I usually spend some time "breathing into" different body parts until I have the whole whole body buzzing with awareness, then I just relax and let the buzzing turn into bliss. This method is also more active - shifting body parts each breath - so you're less likely to get bored with it.
If you are just starting out, counting can be helpful. see if you can get to 100 (or even 10) without forgetting which number you're on.
2. Bearing in mind the concept of quality over quantity, how would you guys spend 8 to 12 hours a day on the road to jhana? Would you sit for most of those hours and allow the mind to settle or have, say, 15 minutes per hour dedicated to quality practice and then continue the day as normal? Maybe something else.
You'll probably want to get up pretty frequently if you haven't sat a lot before. It's not exactly healthy to sit for 8 hours anyway, haha. Up to you though. I generally find that I need to sit completely still, so that's a skill you may need to learn and it can be hard to do. As with everything, work your way up to it.
When I started meditating, I only did about 10 minutes a day and worked my way up to about 30. Did that for about 5 months and the jhanas started appearing. It may be a good idea to work your way up over time. If you want to do lots of meditation right away, why not try walking or doing something physical and simply try to "stay present". This is a concentration exercise, but it doesn't require quite so much dedication as you can do it while enjoying some activity. It'll also lead into insight practice later since you'll need to work on that throughout the day to get good results.
Anyway, this is a novel so I'll shut up now, haha. I hope it helps.