Using Slate Star Codex's Style Guide: Not Sounding Like An Evil Robot, instead of saying "I want to optimize X", you should instead say "I want to find the best way to do X".

There are terms like "operations", "management", and "logistics" that might stand in for "optimizing processes" (depending on what processes you are talking about).

It might also be helpful to talk about an example of some useful project you or someone else has done right away, so that people don't get the wrong idea. (To give a really trivial toy example, "I recently cut down on the time I spend surfing the web by taking all the blogs I follow and putting them on RSS — I like noticing options like that, where I can improve the way I do something.")

I ask because I like to think about the HOW of how things are done. I think it's a strength of mine (feels like play to me, but like work to others). 

But whenever I ask others about their opinion on HOW to do X / tell others that I want to do X more efficiently, they say something like: "There aren't any tricks." / "There aren't any shortcuts." / "You just have to put in the work."