1. Subscribe to what you want to see
2. Bookmark the “your subscriptions” page; don’t visit the home page
2a. Although if you disable watch history, youtube tries to punish you by blanking out the “home” page. I consider that a good thing.
3. Use an ad blocker to hide the comments and side bar (recommended videos)
That’s pretty much what I do. Discoverability happens off-site, which might be a hindrance for you, but I don’t necessarily want more stuff to watch for the sake of more stuff to watch.
Blocking elements with ad block works well, but for convenience I use the extension Unhook. It can redirect the home feed to subscriptions, hide end screen cards, end screen feed, live chat, auto generated mixes, notifications, shorts, etc. I also use a tampermonkey script to auto set theater mode and resolution (necessary for incognito mode).
It would be nice if youtube could include some of these handy features in the settings, but it is not something they want to do it seems.
That’s pretty much what I do. Discoverability happens off-site, which might be a hindrance for you, but I don’t necessarily want more stuff to watch for the sake of more stuff to watch.