I set up several Circles on mine. I have one called "People Only" and it is just the people I follow. No news sites or tech sites or RSS feeds for sci-fi tv, no celebrities or astronomy feeds or cat picture accounts, just people. When I want to catch up just with people I follow, I click it.

I did test the calendar feature with a non-event event and was able to see and respond to it from my Mastodon account. I have not yet played with the groups feature though. That is on my (eventual) to-do list.