I most recently grew my hair out from a bob to below shoulder length late in college. I'd recommend the strategy that Maya mentioned, but due to my hair type being the way it is (abundant like yours, but very fine) I still needed to have many layers in my hair even while it was long - otherwise, my hair was just too heavy and looked like it was plastered flat to my skull.
I would just gradually have my stylist adjust the longest layers to be closer to the same length every time I went in for a cut. I noticed that even while my hair was growing out, it behaved better and annoyed me less if I went in for a trim/shaping regularly, even if I wanted to keep most of the length of my longest layers.
When my hair did irritate me (especially if I had very short, face-framing layers that I wanted to grow out), headbands and bobby pins were very helpful to pull the hair away from my face.
Ultimately, I decided that below-shoulder-length hair is not for me as it took too much maintenance and hassle to get even a semblance of volume and shape when my hair was long, and went back to a chin-length bob after a year or so. I spend about half of the time styling & wrestling with my hair now as I did when it was long, which is a great improvement. (My face does not look good when my hair is pulled back in a ponytail, so that was not a solution for me.)
