He had his players read a book.
The volume he selected was “Chop Wood Carry Water: How to Fall In Love With the Process of Becoming Great.” It isn’t exactly “Anna Karenina.” At a modest 118 pages, it’s the kind of self-improvement manual that an enterprising salesman could finish on a flight from Dallas to Cincinnati.
But its messages, told through parables delivered by a Japanese master to a young American pupil, are clear. Excellence is a slog that requires consistent, tiring work. Setbacks are part of the process. Humbly committing to improvement is its own reward.
“Everybody focuses on that final result and what it looked like and all those things,” Day said recently. “We needed to get back to the beginning of the process—and focusing on the process and not necessarily focusing on the result.”