What is the most optimal way to mine?
Without changing hardware, GPU mining is almost certainly the "best" option. For BitCoin ASIC is the fastest, anything else is a waste of electricity at this point. For LiteCoin GPU is the fastest, and CPUs are around breakeven (electricity usage vs LiteCoin value).

Keep in mind that LiteCoin is inherently about 1000x slower than BitCoin mining. Getting 32kh/s out of a laptop GPU is doing reasonably well (my work laptop does the same). That same GPU can get almost 30Mhps mining BitCoin.