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Having another person around helps me stay on task. I have to put off engaging with those distractions until a scheduled break. For that reason alone, pair programming can be more productive.

I've seen a few patterns at Pivotal. In Pivotal Labs and some R&D projects the team is fully colocated, so Slack isn't necessary for the day-to-day.

To maintain accessibility by remote teams and individuals, most teams will assign an "interrupt pair", who are designated to deal with Slack, walk-by questions and the like.

I have mixed feelings about Slack. It's too addictive. I've enjoyed jousting and joking and forth, but I don't always come out the other side with concrete outcomes.

You DnD. If you don't feel like you can do that, then I would suggest you're not in an ideal working environment for fostering productivity.