TC2

Overview

Standard TC2

• Proposed by: LichterLoh
• Total sleep: 5 hours 10 minutes
• Classification: Tri Core schedule
• Specification: 3 core sleeps of single-cycle length and 2 naps
• Mechanics: One core sleep around SWS peak, one core around REM peak and one core in mid-afternoon. 2 daytime naps in the day to balance out the wake gap.
• Adaptation difficulty: Hard
• Ideal scheduling: 3 core sleeps spread in the day and 2 naps in the middle of the wake gap. There should be at least 2h staying awake between each core.

Adaptation Mechanics

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. 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. Aside from this standard variant, no other variants of TC2 have proved to work thus far.

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 90m 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. However, up to date, there is very limited success with TC2, because of its scheduling.

Lifestyle Considerations

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. 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.

Extending any of the core sleeps by 90m 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.