Highsec explorer here. I don’t run missions. I like doing DED scannable sites rated/unrated. I do ghost data sites. And I do mining fleets/haulers, preferably pirate ones.
Agency window doesn’t help much. Only use it to track escalations, I would prefer stay with journal though. Tracking FOBs in Agency window is quite helpful too, its a bit confusing at the same time though, cause it doesn’t show FOBs more then 5 jumps away and doesn’t indicate it, so if you set 10 jumps/any distance you might get wrong impression. It also doesn’t search past constellation/region borders, so you can get 0 result in one system and full 12 list in the very next. That 12 results limit is something very arguable too btw.
There, I wrote some thoughts on how I think FOBs and RW sites could be fixed. FOB should become system mini-incursion like event, with influence meter, popup chat channel for participants etc. RW sites should be part of that incursion, and running them will help bring FOB down.
NPC mining fleets are quite fun for highsec activity. Rewards are quite fair too. I think 1/20 boxes drops 400 mil mining upgrade or harvester drone BPC (or both, I got both once!). SKINs, I don’t know. The more you run those fleets, the less the profit. Those SKINs are permanent, you know, you can only sell so many before their price drop to 0, some already pretty close to that.
Drifters. I loved when Jove Observatories appeared, lore hype train, rode it for months. Trainwrecked though as it appears there was no puzzle to solve. Not until next stage months or years later. Drifter WHs, I got 2 of them mapped with dozens of bookmarks, all around deadspace pocket. But its obligatory fleet stuff. And nothing to solve or to get going solo. Killing drifters is obligatory fleet activity also, with obligatory losing ships. Cheap destroyer fleet is just not my playstyle. Its sad how they fixed when people found ways to solo Drifters in first weeks. Not my idea of sandbox game.