Big facepalm.
On the matter of summaries: I do something similar.
I also feel that writing things down in your own words goes a long way. When I'm writing things down in my own words I also like to pretend that I'm explaining it to someone who has no knowledge of the topic.
For me at least, this makes every note I take an attempt at an explanation and I often completely rewrite a note on a topic without looking at a previous one. I can then compare them to see how I've progressed as well as replacing the old one if the new one is more concise. I guess this is quite similar to your style.
This usually only takes 2-3 iterations before I'm comfortable with a topic, but if it's something important I need to learn for the long term, I do the re-writing of a note in spaced-repitition-like intervals.