Comment by dredmorbius

The solution to this for me is lists, though there are other options.

Lists group profiles, and I tend to have 2--4 of these, mostly organised by priority / interest, and explicitly NOT organised topically. Roughly, there's A, B, C, and maybe D. This is a system I'd come up with at Google+ and Diaspora*, and find it fits Mastodon pretty well.

I try to keep A limited to 20---40 people / accounts of greatest interest. That evolves over time, in part as people join or leave Mastodon, or as my own interests / frustrations shift.

B are still generally interesting but not as interesting. C and D are filled as I find profiles really aren't bringing me joy in A or B.

Mastodon lets you pin threads (in the traditional/power-user view), so I'll usually have 1--3 of my lists pinned to the display, unpinning as I find them distracting.

Other options are to use filters, to focus on your own instance's local users (if that's sufficiently topical), or to use various group systems (Guppe is the principle tool I use, there are others: <https://a.gup.pe/>).

Note that for topical filtering you're far better off using either keyword filters or group/community systems such as Guppe. As was learnt many times over at Google+ (and its Circles feature), people don't know how you've classified them, and may have little interest in accommodating your ontologies. (People yelling at others for not conforming to how the yeller had organised the others got to be a rather amusing if cringe trope on G+, that site's equivalent of "you're holding it wrong".)

Other tools include limiting reshares by people or within lists, and of course, muting and blocking profiles. I'm of the block early and often school.