Can someone please explain lockpicking?

I'm on a keyboard and mouse. To lock pick, rotate the pick with the mouse and turn the lock with A. But while the lock is rotating, I can't rotate the pick at the same time. So I let go of A. But the lock immediately rotates back left while I rotate the pick. If I keep A pressed, it breaks the lock because I can't rotate the pick.

What the hell am I missing?

You need to gentle tap the A key and rotate the pick between those taps. It's ok if the lock goes back to the default position while moving the pick, it won't reset anything. The unlocking spot will be in the same place even if you exit the minigame screen, so you can cancel the minigame anytime to avoid breaking the lockpick.

If you're ok with using mods, I suggest this one. The instructions are a bit outdated since for the newer versions of the game, the modded files need to be placed inside the Data3.pak (which is just a normal .zip archive), located in \*your Dying Light folder*\DW\
So, in this case you need to place lockpickminigame.scr into Data3.pak, respecting the following folder structure \data\scripts\minigames\

Or you can modify the original file yourself with any text editor, without downloading any mods. First you need to open the Data0.pak archive, located in the same place as explained above. Then you navigate to \data\scripts\minigames\ and extract the lockpickminigame.scr file. Once you open this file in a text editor, you'll probably figure out what values to change, because they are explained there. But I also attached an image with the changes I made so the minigame won't be such a time waster.

Don't forget to backup all the files you are going to modify.