Effective picking has always been hard for me. Perhaps you feel the same. I have seen some really interesting videos from Troy Grady, and they have made me realize that when I started practicing guitar as teenager, I didn't practice the right way when it comes to picking technique. 

I find it's hard to change now but if you want to improve your picking technique, you can learn a lot by watching some of his youtube videos. 

In my view, the goal is to prevent getting into the "trapped zone", as Troy describes it. However, this is easier said than done. I find it very difficult to NOT get into the trapped zone when playing across strings. 

I'm not great at picking across the strings, and I'm not motivated enough to spend a lot of time on improving it. Could I become good at it with a lot of practice? I dunno - maybe, maybe not. I would rather work on other aspects of my musicianship than "picking paranoia" 😄.

I use a different approach - combining my limited picking technique with hammerons and pulloffs. That's a whole different approach but it works for me. 

I do think we can learn a lot from Troy's work (even though he tends to focus on players who are speed demons). Here is a good video on effective picking that I think is worthwhile watching.