For new people (or returnees) settling in here, this is a piece of advice I haven't seen mentioned yet. Go to Settings and choose "Advanced Web Interface." That means Mastodon will pretty much look like Tweetdeck on your desktop. Much easier to manage lists and replies, and easier to follow people from that set up.
This is what mine looks like. "Home" is everybody I follow, "Notifications" is just that, and if you scroll right, I have various columns set up. "Chat", "Politics/ News", etc. And also my local as a timeline, which I sometimes switch over to federated if I'm in the mood for a firehose of posts. It's all customizable, so set it up how it best works for you!