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 interac

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. 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. Pair programming is a great way to make two people half as productive as either would have been working alone.