Colin Jost & Michael Che are the longest-tenured Weekend Update anchors in SNL history. But after their first few episodes back in 2014, an NBC executive called a meeting with SNL producer, Lorne Michaels. “Do you think Jost and Che are working?” the exec asked. Michaels said, "No." "Oh," the exec said, "you know?" Yes, Michaels said. He said he was well aware that his new Weekend Update anchors were not performing all that well. "But it's a thing," Michaels told the exec. "People have to be bad before they can be good." He likes to use the analogy of an ugly baby: "All babies are ugly (unless they're your baby), but after three months, everyone says, 'What a beautiful baby.' You just have to live through that period of people not being good." Takeaway 1: Lorne Michaels said people are bad before they are good. And what's true of people is true of just about all creative work. The co-founder of Pixar Ed Catmull, for instance, calls early mock-ups of Pixar movies—coincidentally—“ugly babies.” “They are not beautiful, miniature versions of the adults they will grow up to be,” Catmull writes. “They are truly ugly: awkward and unformed, vulnerable and incomplete. They need nurturing—in the form of time and patience—in order to grow.” Takeaway 2: Colin Jost and Michael Che, Lorne Michaels told the NBC exec, just needed some time to get through the period of being bad. The record producer Rick Rubin talks about how it’s an underrated ability: the ability to sit with discomfort through that period of being bad. Talking with his fellow multi-Grammy-winning producer Finneas O’Connell, Rubin said, “There’s a great deal of patience involved." Because, he said, everything is bad for a while before it gets good. Finneas agreed, saying, “I think it’s shocking every time how bad things can be on their way to being good. It blows my mind. It’s like when someone’s solving a Rubik's Cube, and it looks like they’re so far from solving it right before they solve it. When you’re in the middle of something—you listen to it, and you’re like, ‘Tomorrow, this might get amazing, but today, it’s so bad.’ The exciting thing is that it’s every time.” “Every time,” Rubin repeats. - - - “You’re only as good as you’re willing to be bad…You’re never going to get good unless you’re willing to be bad.” — Randall Stutman Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!