Add the HN RSS feed to a feed reader, use it to skim the subjects (HN doesn't put anything but the subject line in the feed) and only open those subjects which are of interest. Never hit the main page. This does two things:
1: it allows you to only look at those subjects which are of interest, either through the comments or by opening the page link without seeing the comments
2: it somewhat protects you from the effects of the HN echo chamber/popularity contest in that it shows you everything which made it to HN, no matter whether it was directly pushed off the front page due to flagging/downvoting/overactive moderation.
I'm using the Nextcloud [1] News app [2] as a feed reader, there are others but this one works well and handles large volumes without problems.