This subject comes up quite a bit, so you're not alone!

Speed exercises are work, plain and simple, and you won't make huge leaps and bounds in a matter of days. However, you will notice slight improvements in that length of time.

Obviously there are chromatics 1-2-3-4 on each string ascending the strings, then 5-4-3-2 going down and then 3-4-5-6 going up etc etc etc. As with any speed exercise, you'll want to start by playing slowly, and gradually building up speed. I tend to increase it by 8 bpm when I get the exercise entirely correct 5 times in a row. I've been using a pick for only a little over a year, I fingerpicked before, and now I'm WAY faster than I was before (the link in my signature, for instance, contains music I was playing only a few months after I started using a pick. As you can tell, it's fairly slow and the alternate picking is awkward).