I asked for a pay raise on one of my projects, wrote down the number I had in mind — and immediately the doubts crept in. I’d probably asked for too much. They’d say no, or worse, let me go. I should have asked for less, or put the conversation off entirely. What did I even have to complain about? They were paying me, weren’t they?

That was the spiral I was caught in — until I stopped and thought: why am I doing something the average man simply wouldn’t do?

I keep coming back to something comedian Iryna Gil wrote: women apply for jobs only when they meet every single requirement, while men are happy if they meet maybe 50%. “I’m looking at you, girls,” Iryna wrote. “Guys will apply to be surrogate mothers if the pay is good.”

I try to remember that in moments like these — and I’m reminding you too. If you’ve written your expected salary in a job application, erase it and add 25%. If a company offers a range from X to Y, tell them you’re counting on Y.

I’m well aware that women are still far from gender equality — we’re not prepared to commit 90% of the world’s crimes. Maybe that’s our problem. But there are things we could stand to learn from the average man.

Take chess grandmaster Nemo, who plays chess in the street against passersby and documents it in her blog. Men with ratings twice as low as hers will sit down across from her fully convinced they’re about to win. They never do — but the confidence. I wish that came naturally to us.

I have never seen a woman carry out something genuinely foolish with the same serene self-assurance that men routinely do. Which is a shame, because confidence is enormously useful — if nothing else, for self-presentation.

Coming from someone who occasionally doubts whether she even deserves her impostor syndrome, this is a reminder to myself as much as anyone: confidence generates money, connections, opportunities, and growth far more reliably than quiet competence. At least while the world works the way it does.

So we need to learn to take on responsibility with confidence — and with that same confidence, to not take on responsibility where it isn’t ours to carry. Like not absorbing all the household labor by default. A husband comes home from work, sees the place is untidy, dinner isn’t ready — but he had plans to go to the gym, so off he goes. A wife comes home from work and starts cleaning and cooking, even though she’d planned to work out or simply rest.

Women — don’t let anyone take from you your right to rest, to your health, to sport, to your career. A home, children, a family — these are a couple’s shared choice and shared responsibility. Both people have to carry it. If you notice your partner playing dumb to avoid being asked again, do the same. Don’t take on the role of household manager-in-chief. Ask your husband to write you a list of what needs doing. Let him remind you if something needs to be finished or bought. Divide the mental load just as you would the physical one.

What else is worth learning from men? Stop going quiet. Stop holding your tongue. Stop performing wisdom. Stop settling for less. Stop swallowing your words to smooth things over. Stop taking responsibility for the mood of an entire team. And stop doubting that your work deserves fair pay.

They gave me the raise, by the way.