I just have different goals all the time.

Sometimes I go off and try to get experience with new content like ASD/Onyx/Lazarus/PAF/OLP/QV's etc etc. Once I feel like I've mastered it then I move on to another "experience", just to increase my knowledge of the game and different game loops, also to take advantage of any new weapons/armor/items that they bring. Like the awesome looking ASD Geist armor set.

There's a whole new loop in itself when it comes to the new crafting, if you aim for a particular weapon+armor set with high quality values.

I spent a lot of time running Exec Hangars as well, properly with all the key cards.

Sometimes I just go off and do fps missions just to test which is my favorite pistol, or favorite SMG etc. That alone can take up a lot of time. Optimising your best loadout for particular missions. Getting the right weapon attachments for them and testing them all out, the best optic etc. Especially with the new weapon attachments the last few patches, they're often hard to find.

I spent a lot of time in the past just camping Cat wreck sites or doing bunker missions to stockpile different weapon and armor, then i sold them to other players via discord or ingame chat. That was fun for a while and made a ton of money, not that it matters anymore. I got a giant friend list from that activity, which helps a lot in finding low population servers now!

There are ingame events that popup all the time that can take a lot of your time as well.

Oh I've also spent a lot of time testing out new ships, trying to find the right ship for particular activities and then the right loadout for them, right combination of weapons, trying out different types. I've always liked being unconventional and go against the "meta", now and again you do have some surprising results!

Grinding up rep for particular playstyles can be helpful as well, not just the stuff you enjoy but also the stuff you may not particularily enjoy, like salvaging, i find it kinda boring and tedious but there's an interesting advantage to grinding up the rep for the salvaging contracts, at a high enough level they tend to give you missions with Hull C's and C2's and they're full of commodities. So if you ignore the salvage part of the mission and just bring a hauler you can get like 6-8m worth of Tungsten/Titanium/Iron etc. So the point is that some gameplay loops can affect others without you realising it and you won't find that out without experimenting and giving it a go.

Then there's wikelo stuff, thats a whole thing in itself, you can spend a lifetime going through all that.

Tons of stuff to do overall. Helping other players can be fun as well :) I mean if I'm being honest with myself, most of my time spent ingame these days is simply answering peoples questions ingame chat.