So, basically, spend countless hours tuning the most basic functionality. Skip the most useful functionality, as it's unusable (timeline and search, see other comments).
> carefully select which groups to leave notifications on for
> every day or two you can use the “notifications” tool
> as you do that refine your list of groups
So, continuous tuning for no reason at all.
Let's add things from other comments, shall we?
> The feed is pretty much useless.
> You tune notifications to catch the “must read” stuff and filter out the rest of the noise.
> STFU notifications, then carefully tune back in.
> The feed is crap. Do not read the feed. Make a bookmark bar
their search is crap.