DC3

DC3

Dual Core 3
chart link Legend   Sleep   Dark period   Flexible sleep window
Total sleep	4 hours
Proposed by	Polyphasic Society
Difficulty	Very hard
Specification	1 dusk core, 1 night core, 3 daytime naps

DC3, or Dual core 3, is the third dual core schedule, with shortened core sleeps, and three naps throughout the day. With the standard variant, the total sleep of the whole schedule is 4h, which, along with the divided cores, makes it one of the most difficult schedules that an average sleeper may be able to adapt to.

Mechanism

Further information: Dual core § Mechanism

As with other Dual core schedules, the first core should contain mostly SWS, while the second core sleep will contain mixed sleep stages, due to its early placement as well as the inability to gain all of the SWS required during the first short core. Given the low total sleep, the cores should be scheduled close to the SWS peak to ensure the preservation of SWS. The first nap is placed early in the morning, and will likely contain mostly REM sleep, whereas the other two naps may contain a mixture of light and REM sleep, along with trace amounts SWS.

Compared to other dual core schedules the two cores are placed relatively close together, which helps spread sleep more evenly during the day to ensure alertness on a schedule with such low total sleep.

Adaptation

Polyphasic sleepers can start an adaptation to TC2 and then slowly transition to DC3 (rhythmic preservation, using the same number of sleep blocks on each schedule and change a core into a nap), although this path will take a very long time to achieve for both steps. Alternatively, a gradual adaptation from DC2 or DC1 also looks viable, but so far there are no known successes with this method. Starting the schedule cold turkey (from monophasic) has reported at least one successful adaptation (in the case of a sleep mutant). Regardless of the adaptation pathways, sleepers would eventually need to go through the intensified repartitioning of vital sleep stages to be able to finally adapt to the regular DC3 setup.

Difficulty

DC3 is also one of the 3 schedules whose original design would provide only 4 hours of sleep each day. The other 2 schedules in the same category of minimum sleep threshold for adaptability are E3 and Bimaxion, an easier equivalent of Dymaxion. It is generally agreed on that DC3 is a lot harder than E3, due to the number of rare adaptations and how many days each polyphasic adapter lasts on this schedule before forfeiting their attempt. Compared to Bimaxion, it may be equal in terms of difficulty, which is already formidable for any polyphasic beginners barring sleep mutants with a low monophasic baseline. One niche of the cold turkey adaptation is that non-nappers will be able to learn to nap effectively faster than on schedules with fewer naps or higher amount of sleep; this is owing to the immense sleep pressure from the schedule that builds up swiftly.

Nonetheless, because the longest sleep block on the schedule is only 90 minutes long, DC3 is one of the most difficult polyphasic schedules to adapt to. Even though it has a high frequency of sleep (5 sleeps per day), waking up after only 90 minutes of sleep around graveyard hours makes SWS and/or intense REM wakes very frequent during adaptation. With SWS deprivation symptoms being present until an equilibrium and healthy amount of SWS is obtained, oversleeping can occur in any sleep blocks, especially the core sleeps. Even when the wake gap between each sleep seems to be short, staying awake during graveyard hours during adaptation is going to be a major task, when sleep inertia from the repartitioning cores can prove to be overwhelming.

However, DC3-extended, despite its troublesome scheduling of sleeps, has reported one success in 2020, effectively suggesting that the concepts and design of DC3 are still hospitable for adaptation. The extension of a core sleep on this version facilitates a much more challenging would-be adaptation on the regular DC3 version.

Lifestyle Considerations

Because DC3 possesses all the features of Dual Core sleep, the lifestyles that apply to the previous DC schedules can somewhat apply to DC3. The wake gap at night can be dedicated to religious activities (e.g, praying), studying or planning depending on how long it is. Because of a lot of sleep blocks each day, it is necessary to schedule food and other commitments carefully before attempting this schedule. Only flexible, work-from-home occupations can benefit from this schedule - working at one's own pace in a familiar environment is more relaxing and less demanding than under constant supervision of a boss or a high-ranking member at the office; the amount of sleep deprivation can be insurmountable and can damage a lot of productivity hours when adapting in a more stressful and rigorous environment (e.g, jobs that require constant vigilance, high focus or sharp mental concentration around the clock, having to nap at a noisy workplace or in public, or evening events). In addition, with only 4 hours of sleep, intense exercising may not be suitable as the recovery process may not suffice with increased SWS requirements. Sickness and injury, which can result in excessive sleep, may also break the patterns of the schedule even with the adapted state.

It is also unlikely DC3 will be flexible after adaptation due to its low total sleep. With the distribution of sleeps across a lot of usually socially busy hours, DC3 is more of a short-term polyphasic schedule with a lot of naps for more opportunities of vivid dreaming. Being overshadowed by its counterparts E3 and even E3-extended, DC3 generally has limited viability for any long-term consideration, with all aspects considered.

Variants

Since there are only few adaptations to DC3, there are only few respective scheduling variants should one decide on DC3 for the high frequency of sleep, which can boost alertness around the clock with the dense number of naps.

Extended variant

Version 1 of DC3-extended

This extended version has a long core sleeps and boosts the total sleep to 7h each day. It has recorded one successful adaptation from the Discord community. There is only a 90 m wake gap in between 2 cores, but because the sleeper was a well-entrained segmented sleeper, the short wake gap posed no problems during adaptation. This small wake gap is also dedicated to praying, which does not require several hours staying awake like on other Dual Core schedules. Despite the inconvenient scheduling, it is possible to adapt to this variant with an appropriate lifestyle and certain personal motivations.

Version 2 of DC3-extended

Version 2 has a more realistic setup than the first version, with a reasonable amount of total sleep and can handle the sleep onset issues better during adaptation than the first version. Over the years it has reported one success or so, mostly because of the intrusiveness of the sleep blocks. If scheduling is possible, the wake gap between 2 cores can be used for more activities and the distribution of sleeps can make for a comfortable adaptation, where skipping a nap on this variant during adaptation should not do as much damage as on the standard version. However, it is recommended that beginners should pursue E3-extended instead, with the same amount of sleep, much higher success rate and more beneficial scheduling.

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