One thing that helped was accepting that bookmarking it was just a way of putting it down for now, and that I always have the option to come back to it. That doesn’t happen often, but pruning back all those tabs did remind me of a couple things I’d marked that I wound up doing things with. And then on a regular basis I’ll run into a problem and think, “Wait, I think I marked a site in Raindrop about this…aha! There it is.” So storing those marks (as long as they’re searchable!) still has benefit without immediate action, which helps me not leave them open (although I’m still wrestling with it…).
Meanwhile, the act of browsing all those interesting reads and looking at those projects is beneficial in its own right even if I do nothing else but read and bookmark. By reading and absorbing all those different ideas, I make it far more likely that when I’m working on projects at work or talking with other people, my brain will pull those random articles together and make a connection or a reference that’s useful.
A friend of mine likes to call herself the “corporate bumblebee”, gathering bits from one project and connecting it to other projects like a bumblebee spreading pollen. Think of reading HN as being a tech bumblebee: you’re gathering the pollen that you can later give to other people.