All of these things you are describing are a good way to waste large amounts of time without getting anything worthwhile done.  The 5% where you are not interacting with others is the tiny sliver of time you are afforded to actually produce the product that the rest of the business is built on.<p>With the correct group of people, all of this feel-good communication can be replaced by a handful of people that know what they are doing, keeping an online task board updated and communicating primarily asynchronously by email, or if absolutely necessary, synchronously by IM.<p>Pair programming is a great way to make two people half as productive as either would have been working alone.