Following shows my journey. I did not really use it much in 2013 and 2014 as shown, in 2015 I put the effort into it and I must say after 2016 I saw a huge habit change and now I "get" it. It is customized to my liking and needs and works really nicely. Once you realize how easily you can retrieve things (for me especially with tags) then you start capturing even more. Right now averaging 12-13 notes a day and I have 12,200+ notes.
Like @Duane said, it is not competition and to be honest, the number of notes does not really matter if you cannot set it up that you cannot retrieve it when you need it. Otherwise, anybody can dump anything into it and reach the 100,000 note mark but like anything else if the information is not retrievable, you don't technically have it.
PS! This chart was already in Evernote, was not updated in 2018 but was easy to retrieve.