TC2

The third schedule in the Tri-core line, which consists of three cores and two naps.

TC2

Tri Core 2
chart link Legend   Sleep   Dark period   Flexible sleep window
Total sleep	5 hours 10 minutes
Proposed by	LichterLoh
Difficulty	Hard
Specification	3 single-cycle core sleeps plus 2 naps.

Origin

Tri Core 2, or TC2, is also one of the newer Tri Core prototypes. Made by LichterLoh from the Discord community, TC2 is largely different from its predecessors Triphasic and TC1.

Mechanism

The idea behind TC2 is not to cram all three core sleeps into the night like on TC1, or having all cores somewhat equidistant like on Triphasic. Since the sleep frequency of TC2 is the highest among the Tri Core family, which overall has a very low number of naps needed, all sleeps, including the cores, are spread out, with 2 cores being focused at night (and potentially take on the feature of Dual Core sleep, where the midnight core favors SWS, while the core around sunrise hours favors REM sleep). The third core, located at late afternoon hours, coincides with the timing after usual hours of school and work as a way to give a long recovery after a long day.

The daytime naps serve to provide a high frequency of sleep and bolster alertness levels. Because of the high frequency of sleeps, staying awake between each sleep on TC2 may not be as difficult as on Triphasic and TC1. Most notably, compared to the original Triphasic sleep, TC1 and TC2 give more total sleep, which only happens in the Tri Core schedule group. This is because the 90 m cores are already at the lowest number of sleep cycles, and the total sleep increases because of the addition of nap(s).

Because of a generally bigger wake gap between the cores, it may be easier to fall asleep in the 2 cores around graveyard hours (~midnight to 8 AM), which can lower the chance of oversleeping with subsequent naps and another core in the late afternoon. This late afternoon core likely behaves the same as the daytime core on Triphasic, giving mixed SWS and REM.

Adaptation

So far, there are very few adaptations to TC2 because of its massively inconvenient scheduling, with multiple sleep blocks intruding normal social hours that require wake time.

Difficulty

Up to date, there is very limited success with TC2, because of intrusive scheduling requirements, which leads to few actual adaptation attempts and therefore few data points to base the difficulty rating on.

Based on the short duration of all cores, requiring a high level of repartitioning, the total high number of sleeps(increasing probability of oversleeping on any of them) and the necessity to spend most of the graveyard hours in DP, as well a moderate TST of 5,10 hours, TC2 should be rated moderate to hard.

Lifestyle considerations

And with the clunky scheduling of 3 core sleeps and a somewhat high total sleep for a schedule with 5 sleep blocks per day, TC2 is vastly outclassed by other more comfortable schedules such as E2 (same total sleep), E3-extended (easier adaptation), DC1, DC2, and its own Tri Core counterparts. Thus, this schedule only benefits very flexible jobs (e.g, work at home, self-employed) and work-at-your-pace lifestyle. Other than this, TC2 is not considered a long-term viable schedule, even though it is potentially more flexible than Triphasic and TC1, thanks to the extra nap to further keep homeostatic pressure balanced.

Variants

Aside from this standard variant, no other variants of TC2 have proved to work thus far. Extending any of the core sleeps by 90 m proves to be more of a nuisance to schedule 5 sleeps, and it is highly ill-advised to attempt any extended versions. Because TC2 looks very redundant, it is a better approach to attempt any of the more convenient schedules as mentioned above.

References

Polyphasic Sleep Schedules Scheduling overview Biphasic E1 Extended Siesta Segmented BiphasicX Everyman E2 Extended E3 Extended E4 Extended E5 Sevamayl Trimaxion Dual core DC1 Extended DC2 Extended DC3 DC4 Bimaxion Tri core Triphasic TC1 TC2 Nap only Uberman Dymaxion Tesla Spamayl Experimental QC0 Ducamayl Camayl Hypothetical Non-polyphasic Monophasic Random