It's not impossible. I went from a hourly checker to only checking it twice a week. You just need to practice self control and realize most tech news aren't interesting or useful to know.
1. Scan headlines for a topic I'm interested in, say, geometric algebra.
2. Rapidly scan the comments for people linking to other media (books, blog posts, libraries, etc.) that are related to geometric algebra.
I get vastly superior pointers to useful material this way than any other approach I've tried, and I'm extremely good at research anyway.
So even at HN, the most addictive content is considered to have the highest value. Seems…topical.
It's interesting to see HN debate itself. The asymmetrical karma allocation can be a really interesting factor.
One thing that's helping is Lobsters. Lobsters is super slow so if I do make a full switch from HN to that I only need to check it a handful of times a week.
But to me, it's not so much about how much time I spend on the time but rather the why. I simply don't get as much value out of HN as I think I do. Most news are irrelevant and unimportant, and I haven't really learned anything too insightful like others said they have (sadly). Simply put, tech news boards apparently just aren't for me.
Now, Lobste.rs is different. They're a small community with a narrower focus on mostly tech stuff. They have relatively low noise with a preference for deeper insight on tech. You'll see more writeups on algorithms than product releases for instance. They also have an open-source website and open moderation log. A bit radical on occasion like where owner JCS just got rid of downvotes to experiment if upvote-only would keep quality without total censorship.
Definitely check out the articles over there on top of the ones here. The comments especially as people often say something there that someone here overlooked or vice versa.
It would be helpful to see the specific links that you're basing this view on, so we could clear them up.