A story requires that your character goes through some kind of change.
If your character is the same at the end and at the beginning of the novel, it means that your novel failed.
A reader follows your character through a journey. People should be a little bit different after each journey they take.
No journey means no change and it means that your reader has seen just an ordinary day of an ordinary character.
If you put an ordinary character into an extraordinary situation, you’ve got yourself a journey.