I personally often look at Ask and Show more deeply than Top. I find those to be more interesting to me.
I limit HN to AM bathroom times mostly, but do check it out some days while I work. If I’m unsuccessful at managing distractions or just want a low stress break, it’s a quick way to satisfy.
Show HN is a different environment and very little is useful, but still better than Product Hunt. There's a lot of interesting/inspirational stuff though.
Main page is nice at times, but also full of people who neither read the article nor understand the topic.
Most of the time I skip the top comments (which are often unpopular opinions like "bitcoin is ponzi") and dig around the middle comments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
I particularly like "Most active current discussions" page: